Watching Her
by ally.enchantress
Summary: Olivia always survived. She was a survivor. She’d survived Sealview, and she had to survive the repercussions of that because, if she didn’t , I wasn’t sure what would happen to the rest of us. Fin's POV on Olivia's post-Sealview recovery. PostSmut up now
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: This is all from Fin's POV. Basically, everything is revolving around Fin watching Olivia cope with Sealview, and maybe some random parts in between, if I make this something with multiple chapters. Yes, he's swearing a lot. Most people do that during times of extreme stress. I bet Olivia was cussing Gitano out in every way, shape, and form she was capable of in the episode "Fault." If you notice, he'll ease up once he finds her. Please R&R! I love reviews like [insert favorite food here]!**

**Disclaimer: Everything Law & Order SVU is the property of Dick Wolf, as of right now. Ah well... maybe for my birthday, huh? Probably not.**

The bastards could do whatever the hell they wanted to me if or when they found me, but screw them. I had seen enough in two days to figure out what might happen if I left Olivia alone for too long. The doctor lady didn't know shit, telling me the fun would still be there after she came back with new needles. With her attitude, she'd be gone for hours and, by the time she got back, Liv could be dead. There was no way I was waiting for the bitch to get back.

None of the other officers cared. Hell, they probably assumed I was just in a hurry to screw one of the inmates. I literally sprinted down the hall, slowing to a brisk walk whenever I heard footsteps. The way to Olivia's cell was the only thing I knew by heart in this place, and I knew immediately that something was wrong when I hurried down the block to the particular iron bars that caged Olivia in away from freedom and only one face peered out between the gaps. Her cellmate, I didn't know or care to find out her name, was eyeing me suggestively. Damn, what happened in here was bad enough to turn every inmate into a prostitute.

I took a quick look around Liv's prison chambers and a burning flame erupted in my stomach when I realized she wasn't there. Her cellmate was still staring at my face, something between desperation and need in her eyes. "Where's your cellie?" Where was Olivia?

"Busy." Damnit. Shit. She was gone. "But I'm free." I let her out of my sight for one second and some sick bastard decides to satisfy his own perverted desires with her. I yanked Olivia's—I hated referring to anything in this prison as Olivia's—cell door open and her cellmate got ideas. "Or we could do it right here if you want…"

"I like privacy." Apparently, so did Olivia's captor. "Take me where you guys go where there's no camera." She had to be there. She had to be.

She came out and I didn't even bother to cuff her as she started walking, agonizingly slowly, down the block to the door. I couldn't care less if she bolted, as long as she bolted after we'd found Liv.

While I followed her, silently urging her to move faster, I spent the time cursing myself in every language I knew, in every way possible. Captain had assigned me to protect her. He'd set me up in here to be her handler, make sure she stayed safe and didn't get into any trouble. My orders were to get in, find the perp, and get out. I'd hit her, making her bleed. She hadn't known Cragen had stuck me with her until I'd had to hit her for attacking an officer, and that look on her face was almost relieved. She was glad, somewhere, that someone was looking out for her wellbeing, seeing as she didn't have the sense to do it herself, what with her stupid policy of putting everything before herself. She'd fucking apologized to me for getting fucking blood on my shoes. She'd pulled up her shirt on the advice of her stupid cellmate, opened her collar to try and blend in or something, she'd certainly gotten fucking Matthew Parker's attention, and he'd made her say to me 'I'm sorry I got blood on your shoes, it won't happen again' in that smartass way of hers that made the receiver feel like an idiot. And now where was she? She was at the mercy of some creep who considered her no better than a common criminal. And where was I? I was following some chick in prison on the pretense of screwing her, moving at about negative ten miles an hour, trying to find her. Where was she? Where was she? Where was she? Damnit, where the hell was she?

The woman stopped in front of a door.

"Here?" I asked. The basement; how typical.

"We can't go in there," she said quickly. "The doorstop's up, and that means it's occupied and we gotta stay out."

The hell we did. I threw open the door and heard Olivia's voice moaning in fear. Fear. I'd heard her angry, stressed, desperate, happy, drunk, in pain, sick with poison, and absolutely disgusted, but never had I heard anything even close to fear. I ran all the faster, reaching the back wall within seconds. My mind took in the scene faster than I would have thought possible, and the only thing that I could think was _Oh, my God._

"She was trying to escape." She was chained to the fucking bars, pressed against the unyielding metal door, trembling and gasping and trying in vain to hold back tears. Her hair was messy, her face was sweaty and pale and streaked with evidence of her sobs, her right arm was cuffed to the door and vibrating with terror, her left arm was curled around her torso like she was trying to push herself into a two-dimensional being, and the rest of her body was huddled into itself and practically glued to the door. Her eyes met mine and they nearly forced me to take a step back, they were absolutely saturated with agony and fear.

"And you had to pull your pants down to stop her." He sickened me. I shoved my way past him and swiftly released Olivia's arm. She jerked it down by her body before taking the hand I offered her. Pulling her upright and placing myself almost directly in front of her, I returned my attention to the evil bastard before me.

Olivia's voice, breathless and a little shaky, came from behind me, saturated with thoughts of justice. "Lowell Harris, you are under arrest for raping Ashley Tyler."

"And the attempted murder of a police officer," I finished, a sense of satisfaction washing over me.

He looked directly at her. "You're a cop?" His eyes widened in disbelief. Olivia's cellmate, hiding farther back in the crates and shit down here, flitted her apprehensive gaze from me to Olivia.

I did not turn around as I felt rather than heard her nod. "Who's the bitch now?" she asked. I didn't know whether to hug her or kill him first. I'd get around to both, I was sure.

Harris glared at her, livid. Breaking the clip that held them there as I did so, I pulled handcuffs from my belt and roughly shackled the bastard. I started to walk away when Olivia swayed on her feet and collapsed against my back. I felt her quaking body reaching near convulsions and she tried and failed to right herself. This sick motherfucker was going to pay with interest for what he did to her. Keeping one hand securely on Harris's cuffs, I turned sideways to wrap an arm around Liv and steady her. She stood again, still unsteady on her feet, and I resisted the urge pain.

And I now realized I had encountered a small problem. I didn't know how far Olivia could walk, but I couldn't let go of Harris because he would bolt. A quick flash of orange crossed my line of sight. The unnamed cellmate was standing beside Olivia, exactly her height, helping her balance.

Olivia gently removed her cellmate's arm from around her waist. "Thanks, Amber," she said faintly, "but I'm okay."

Amber obligingly backed off, seeming almost eager to escape from the physical contact, and Liv steadied herself for a moment before catching my eye. By unspoken consent, we walked side by side, Harris in front of us. Amber walked slightly ahead of Olivia, probably hoping for some sort of good behavior award from one of us.

I kept a close watch on Liv's steps. As soon as she faltered, I would be ready to catch her. But she didn't stumble. Her face was very careful, emotionless, and she deliberately placed one foot in front of the other. At the exit, I handed Olivia her badge and she stared at it almost reverently before flashing it to the security guard, who was watching us with suspicion and curiosity. I kept Lowell Harris rigidly in my grip, and I heard Olivia speaking to both the security guard and Amber while I contacted Cragen with a request for a squad car and a plain car to take us back to the house.

"Take her back to her cell and make sure she's not punished for being out here," she told the guard, who nodded.

"Kat?" Amber was slightly bewildered. "What's going on?"

Liv's lips curved at the corners, but I didn't classify it as a smile. "It's Olivia, actually," she said softly. "I was looking for a rapist…and I guess we found him." She nodded to her former cellmate, who did not smile or react in any way. Instead, she allowed herself to be led away by the guard. Olivia turned to me and gave me a look I could not interpret. "Did you call a car, by any chance?"

"I did. They're coming."

At that moment, a registered NYPD police vehicle pulled up in front of us, followed by a black Ford Focus. Two street cops came over to us, sizing Olivia up in a way that, where it would normally have made her tell them where to shove their eyes, caused her to shrink imperceptibly closer to me. The problem, I realized, was that they thought she was an inmate and they subsequently didn't have to respect her at all. This difficulty was easily taken care of, and we both got the added bonus of watching their faces twist as I said, "Detective Fin Tutola. This is Detective Olivia Benson. We need you to take this piece of shit down to the sixteenth precinct."

I watched Olivia's lips quirk the slightest bit at the street cops' facial expressions. The hint of a smile vanished, however, as soon as Harris was shut in the squad car and shuttled away. I led her unresisting form to the Ford, and she slid into the passenger side without a word. When I glanced over at her from the driver's seat, I couldn't figure out whether her faking unconcern bothered me more than her present blank expression. Her eyes were pointed out the window, but they were unfocused and glazed over like she was miles away from here, holed up in some small corner of her mind. I wondered if she were psyching herself up for our impending discussion with our respective partners, and our captain. Munch would be easy enough to speak to, but I shuddered at the mere prospect of Olivia facing Elliot all by herself.

"Fin."

Her voice was so quiet, so defeated that I thought again of the very appealing idea of dislocating and breaking each and every one of Harris's bones before slowly castrating him with a knife infected with Ebola.

"Yeah, Liv?"

She turned her head slowly to look at me. Her eyes, thankfully, had more life to them than before. It looked as though her trademark vibrancy was returning, little by little, piece by piece. Gaze suddenly fiery, she mentally pinned me to my seat as she whispered fervently, "Don't tell Elliot."

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**So? Love it? Hate it? I enjoyed writing Fin's fantasies of harm to Harris. Please review! I would really appreciate it if you would tell me how you feel about it!**

**--Kate**


	2. Chapter 2

**Oh my goodness, thanks for the reviews! Okay, so I've got the flu, and it sucks, so I haven't been at school, and all I've been able to do is watch Burn Notice and use my computer. So, I've been doing a lot of typing, needless to say. I hope nobody is too sensitive to Fin's...er...creative fantasies. Personally, I don't think they're that bad, but I made them up, so who am I to talk?**

**ally**

**Disclaimer: Christmas is long gone, as is Valentine's Day, so something tells me I'll be waiting a long time for Dick Wolf or Dick Stabler to grant my wish. So, everything still belongs to Mr. Wolf. I own nothing.**

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She was walking beside me, almost too close. There was about two inches of space between her shoulder and my arm, and we were both studiously preserving that space. I glanced across at her again. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest, but she had that determined look on her face that I had missed during our stint in Sealview. She was back in her element, and all vestiges of weakness vanished as she went back to being the tough-girl cop she knew how to be.

We came through the door together, Harris and the uniformed cop following a few feet behind. Olivia didn't look very comfortable with the arrangement, but I could understand that. I wasn't either.

"Liv!" Her partner stood up like someone had stuck a tack under his ass, and his eyes flashed between Harris and Olivia as he stood directly in front of her. I nodded to him and made for my desk, careful not to touch Olivia while she stared frozen at Stabler.

"Hey, El," she said. I was relieved that her voice had returned to its normal volume. If she wanted me to keep this secret, she would be acting completely normal. I would be the weak link if we weren't counting Harris. Elliot would come talk to me before confronting his unmovable partner, and I would have to make sure I didn't give anything away. There was no way I could live with myself if I betrayed her trust over something this big.

I'd all but forgotten about the uniform holding our perp when he said loudly, "Well, I've gotta get going," and left.

The obvious, major problem with him leaving was that he was the one holding Harris. When he let go, moronically assuming Olivia would take over, Harris didn't bolt. Instead, he lunged at Olivia, knocking her into Elliot, who stepped to the side and caught her, holding her tightly to his chest as Harris, like a fucking mad cow, tried to free himself from the handcuffs so as to beat Liv into a mass of bruises and blood. I flew at him with my gun out. Cragen had come out of his office with the intention of greeting us and was now pointing his own weapon at Harris. Munch was mimicking my position, but I was running to pull the bastard off Liv.

I had gotten about two fucking steps when her foot snaps up out of nowhere, catches Harris in the stomach, and sends him back a couple of steps. Quick as a flash, she yanked out of Stabler's protective grasp and backed away in my direction. Elliot grabbed the chain linking Harris's cuffs and wrestled him into the nearest interrogation room with no expensive furnishings. Olivia continued stepping back until she ran smack into me. I steadied her as best I could while trying to refrain from coming in contact with her skin. I'd noticed on the drive here that the slightest pressure on any part of her body caused her to wince in pain. There were the beginnings of bruises on her face and neck, so I could only imagine what condition the rest of her was in. Managing to balance her on her feet with hands on her shoulders (she stiffened visibly until I let her go), I backed away like she was a cornered animal. Admittedly, she sure was acting like one. Until, that was, Elliot came back, breathing heavily.

"Well, that was interesting," she said, walking back to her desk and picking up the file on it. "Hey, captain." She looked up at him and treated him to a quick smile.

Cragen nodded at her—"Welcome back, you two,"—but his eyes narrowed slightly as he finally noticed what I had been watching for. The smile she'd given was not her normal smile. It was a curve of the lips, creating lines around her mouth but doing nothing to her eyes, which were alternating between flat and apprehensive. He turned to me and I suddenly got nervous. Stabler I could lie to, but, if the captain asked what had happened at Sealview, I couldn't say nothing.

He registered my change in expression as well but let it slide. "Who's doing interrogation?" he asked.

Liv's head shot up from the file. "Me," she quickly stated.

An unheard sigh was the extent of my reaction. She wanted to keep Elliot and Munch out of the loop at all costs, and she was apparently going to try to limit my involvement as well. No way. "I'll watch, Cap," I volunteered, conscious of her anger simmering in my direction. Did she really think Cragen would let her go in there with a bastard who'd just tried to kill her? Twice? She shrugged and made to stalk off, but I called her back. "Let him simmer a while, Liv," I said, barely concealing my evilly delightful fantasies of Harris getting so claustrophobic that he smashed the glass one-way window and accidentally cut his throat on the way out.

No objection was raised, so I went with the assumption that she was entertaining her own daydreams of placing her hands around his neck and slowly, excruciatingly choking the life out of him. Either that or taking a butcher's knife and chopping of each and every one of his extremities. In my opinion, they both sounded appealing.

"I'm going up to change," she announced. I swear it was like one of those cartoons where the character runs off so fast they leave a cloud of dust in their wake.

Come to think of it, getting out of this uniform would probably be beneficial for me as well. I followed her.

The sound of a locker door slamming shut preceded my arrival. She had removed her orange prison top and exchanged it for a black sleeveless shirt. When I walked in, Liv was leaning against Elliot's locker with her eyes closed.

"Liv?"

She spun around and winced. Her bare arms were covered in bruises, purplish and painful-looking. Her necklace hung over a small cut below her collarbone. She met my eyes with no emotion and turned her back again. Ignoring me completely, she bent over to grab the long-sleeved, dark blue shirt that had clearly been chosen to hide her injuries, and the tank top rode up a little, exposing what should have been unmarked skin. Except for the fact that it wasn't.

"Olivia." She straightened, sighed, and looked at me questioningly. "Show me your back."

Her eyes narrowed, but she obligingly turned her back on me and held still. Taking this as a consent, which was dangerous in and of itself, I walked behind her and very carefully lifted the back of her shirt so I could see the obscenity Harris had inflicted upon her.

The injury was a gash with a bruise surrounding it, bloody and hideous. The cut itself was about three inches long and encrusted with dried blood. The entire thing was encircled with a bruise roughly the shape of a nightstick, and I briefly imagined feeding thick barbed wire down his throat and pouring hydrochloric acid on the puncture wounds.

"Liv. You need to get that checked out." I dropped her shirt and disappeared to just outside the door, granting her some privacy while she finished changing clothes. She called me in seconds later and traded places with me while I removed the prison guard uniform, which I intended to burn as soon as fucking possible. I needed to get the stench of Sealview off me. "Olivia." She stood in the doorway, watching me calmly.

"Yes, Fin?" she said.

I held up the orange jumpsuit she'd been required to wear and offered it to her. "Where do you want to start the fire?"

She grinned almost genuinely. "We're burning it?"

"Not just that," I informed her, showing her my uniform.

The grin widened. "Anywhere's fine."

So, we stuffed the offending attire in a garbage bag and started out the squad room door.

"Where you going?" Elliot asked, watching Liv cautiously.

"We're going to buy the materials to make a pipe bomb or two," she answered. "Let Harris stew in his own evil until we get back."

* * *

The flames cast a warm, red glow on her face. She tossed Kat's jumpsuit into the fire pit and watched coolly as it smoldered. My uniform followed close behind.

As soon as we could no longer see the material, she sighed almost indistinguishably, grabbing the bucket of water and dousing the flames. She turned her back on the smoking ashes and left quickly, like she was in a hurry to leave the whole thing behind her.

I followed, and a disturbing thought came to mind. Post-traumatic stress disorder could be found in nearly 7-8% of people in the US. Of those 8%, about 30% would be rape victims. Women were twice as likely to develop PTSD as men, and an estimated 5 million people in the United States suffer from PTSD at any one time. I knew all of this because I had researched it. Would Olivia be one of those 5 million?

A PTSD-afflicted Olivia Benson would be a frightening sight to behold. She inflicted enough stress on me as it was. There was no way the squad could hold on with the glue holding us together up to her eyes in flashbacks and nightmares.

* * *

We walked into the 1-6 in perfect synchronization. My footsteps echoed with hers, but I think my mind was much closer to the moment than hers. She might have been prepping for interrogation. The bastard had been fermenting in a cesspool of his own rapist thoughts for around two hours. I would have been comfortable keeping him in that room overnight, going home, leaving him there all alone, and coming back in the morning to find him clawing at the walls in terror. However, that was not the way the world worked. Unfortunately. So, before Olivia could even greet her partner, who looked like he'd been pacing since we'd left, Cragen insisted on our presence in interrogation.

"He deserves a lot longer, but you might as well get it over with," he said with authority. Damnit.

To my half-surprise, Liv didn't object. Instead, she proceeded down the hall and strode into the interrogation room before I could even get to the window to watch.

Harris brought me a surprisingly pleasurable sensation in my stomach when he raised his fist at Olivia, showing that he was cuffed to the desk. Ah, the sweet knowledge of revenge rang in my head. Keep your fucking hands where they belong, you bastard. She, apparently, had also noticed this exciting new development, because she had that smart-ass little smirk on her face as she circled him like a shark.

Her position amused me when she finally stopped moving. She was sitting almost directly in front of him, very comfortable on the table. With her posture, I half-expected her to lean back on her elbows. But, no. She was, instead, slightly hunched over, head turned directly at him so all I could see was the back of her head. She must have had her castration-with-a-blunt-chainsaw expression in place because Harris was looking suitably apprehensive. I assumed her smirk had widened a few seconds later; the twisted motherfucker replaced the disturbed face with a cynical slash of a mouth. I grinned. If he thought this was bad, he'd be cowering in his seat by the time she was done with his sorry ass.

My attention remained unceasingly fixed on the pair of them, cop and guard, as Olivia coolly and systematically went through his past stints in male prisons.

"Apparently they stuck you in a women's prison because you didn't have the balls to handle men," she said as I grinned. There was hope yet if she had recuperated enough to mercilessly taunt the perp.

But she wasn't done yet. There was no way she could stop there when there was so much she could do with that particular comment. "You know what I think?" Oh, yeah, Liv. Hit the bastard where it hurts. "I think you hate women." I could see this coming a mile away. This was going to be painful. She leaned forward slightly and I imagined that I've-got-you-now look she possessed. "And, if you hate women so much, that must mean you like men." Yeah! Go, Liv!

Harris shot out of his seat and got right in her face. I momentarily panicked before remembering how limited movement was when one was cuffed to the interrogation table. "Shut up," he whispered furiously. "Shut up, you fucking whore." I wondered if he was always this touchy.

Olivia's retort was like the crack of a whip. "Did I strike a nerve?" I punched the air in triumph as Harris stared daggers at the detective before him, who was radiating smugness from every pore.

Within seconds, a defense attorney was in there, too, exchanging words with Olivia. I watched with narrowed eyes, developing a festering loathing for Lowell Harris's lawyer. Nothing went too badly until she said, "He almost raped and killed me."

To which he replied, "He didn't know you were a cop."

My fingers closed around his imaginary neck, squeezing the life out of him while Liv shot back, "And that gives him the right to try and rape me?"

Fury clogged my ears and guilt reddened my eyes. Nothing gave him the right to violate Olivia like he had done, but, in the same sense, nothing gave me the right to leave her alone and vulnerable while I got tested for fucking TB. There was no way I could justify the way I had ignored my responsibility to protect her. Look what happened to her, Fin. Look at her! She was on the other side of a pane of glass, interrogating her almost-rapist and arguing with her almost-rapist's lawyer. I had put her there. My fucking stupidity had almost gotten her killed. I needed more than two hands on which to count everything I'd done wrong at that hellhole of a correctional facility.

She emerged, leaving Harris with his bastard attorney, and leaned against the doorframe with an expression somewhere between exhaustion and satisfaction. I couldn't decide which.

"Did you have fun?" I asked.

A vindictive grin broke her lips. "Oh, yeah," she said. "Loads."

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**Pleased? I hope so! I'm about to start the next chapter, so hang in there please! As always, reviews are like Motrin (the miracle drug) for me at this point. Can't live without 'em! No, I don't mean that in an addictive way, just that I'm sick and would love to feel better!**

**ally**


	3. Chapter 3

**I'm sorry for the delay. I am now back at school, and it's harder to find time to write. Not to mention the fact that I am totally swamped in research about the Watergate Scandal. Speaking of which, if you know of any movies about Watergate that are not titled _All the President's Men,_ could you tell me, please?**

**Anyway, I think this one is a little short. It's not that much of a significant point in time in my opinion and I really didn't have many ideas because there was no episode to build off. However, it has a certain irony to it, I think, so please read and tell me what you think!**

**Disclaimer: Not mine as of yet. Everything belongs to Dick Wolf and the talented actors and actresses that bring these wonderful characters to life, and the writers and camera people and everyone else who makes my Tuesdays wonderful. Yes, I'm applying flattery. Is it working?**

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It was Tuesday, and one of those rare days where I got to the 1-6 before anyone else. To be honest, I hadn't gotten much sleep at all. This wasn't due to the fact that there had been no answer to my transfer request, or that Lake's trial was tomorrow. No, this was due to the fact that I had dreamt about being just seven seconds late to save Olivia. Seven fucking pathetic, measly seconds. Was it possible to have post-traumatic stress disorder when you weren't the one who'd experienced the trauma?

Probably not. I was curious, though, why Liv had not yet freaked. I'd been worried about her since Sealview, but she hasn't yet shown any outward signs that things were wearing on her. What disturbed me more was something I could not decide. While I was relieved that Olivia wasn't suffering, waiting for something to happen was stressful.

The dream automatically replayed in my mind, causing me to clench my fists in fury.

~ * ~ *~

_Amber tripped. On her way down the stairs, she fucking tripped, fell against the wall, and cost me the precious few seconds I could spare, which amounted to none. I pulled her roughly to her feet and kept her walking to the door._

_The doorstop was up._

"_That means someone's already in there," she explained._

_Screw that. I shoved the key into the lock, nearly fumbling it with hasty fingers. It turned jerkily for some reason. The door opened agonizingly slowly, and I burst through it._

_My mouth went dry. I wished I could scour my eyes with a blowtorch, and then burn Harris alive. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, begging me to shoot the bastard, but I could not move fast enough, nauseated and horrifyingly hypnotized by what I was witnessing. The events that were all my fault._

_Olivia was unconscious, hanging a few inches above the floor by her wrist, cuffed to the doorknob. She was bleeding profusely from a wound to her head. Crimson liquid dripped onto the concrete and caused ripples in an already disturbingly large puddle beneath her head. Her mouth was slightly open, and I could see even from here that her lips were swollen. Harris was leaning over her, a disgusting expression on his face. His hands were all over her, touching her. Violating her. _Raping_ her. The bastard was fucking raping her, making her the next special victim._

_I shouted with rage. I couldn't even understand what I'd said. All I knew what that it caused Harris to look up in shock and see the badge I had pulled out. It was my badge. Not Officer Johnson's badge, _my_ badge. I had hers, too, but I kept that hidden._

_As I moved toward him, his hand went to her throat, but by the time he made contact with her pale, thin neck, I was already behind him, half-heartedly refraining from dislocating both his shoulders. Exceedingly grateful that I was in possession of two pairs of cuffs, I put bracelets around both his wrists and then used the other set to attach him to the nearest pole._

_Things very quickly heated up. Harris started yelling, so I pulled my foot back and knocked him out cold, buying me the time I needed to call for back-up. I crossed to Olivia like lightning, releasing her wrist from the handcuffs and catching her limp, still form before it came in contact with the cold ground. Speaking rapidly into my walkie-talkie, I checked her breathing and pulse. "Detective Tutola, Manhattan SVU. I need a bus and back-up in the basement of Sealview Correctional Facility. It's in lockdown right now. Disable any obstruction if you have to." I pulled Olivia into my lap, leaning her head against my shoulder while I gave the address twice and set the walkie on the floor in front of me._

_Attending to Olivia was difficult, but then I remembered Amber. She approached cautiously, eyes wide and frightened. "Who…who are you?"_

"_I'm a detective. This is Olivia. She's my partner." Well, not quite, but it was an easy explanation. "Now," I had to get Liv's bleeding stopped. "I need you to find me something to press against her head to stop the bleeding. Preferably thick cloth."_

_She stared at me._

"_Go!" I yelled, and she fled._

_Olivia twitched slightly, and a soft moan escaped her parted lips. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment and then soft brown orbs were staring at me. Tired and confused, she blinked twice before opening her mouth more and speaking._

"_Fin?" She spoke in a whisper, no more than a breath of air. "What happened? When did you…" her eyes slowly refocused on something I could not see and I watched as memory flooded her mind._

_Anguish floated in her melted chocolate eyes. "He…he…Fin, did he…"_

_She struggled for words and my heart writhed in guilt and agony. I had been on time. I remembered being there in time to save her! So why did this lateness feel so real?_

~ * ~ * ~

"Fin? You okay?"

It was Liv, and she looked terrible.

"Yeah," I replied, and took a good look at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and dark circles shadowed their undersides. Both were indicative of her own sleepless night. What I didn't like was that, however tired she might be, her pupils were both dilated and she seemed just a little out of breath, like she'd been running from something of which she was scared stiff.

Once again, I remembered that I'd only ever seen Olivia scared of Harris, and, since he was in prison for the rest of his miserable life, her fear presented a problem.

She watched me with concern for a moment and then sat down at her desk.

Something about her eyes was haunting me. "Liv, you sleep okay last night?"

A slight hesitation was all I needed to understand everything. I heard the stress in her voice when she said yes. Sometimes, I supposed, yes meant no. That shit in her eyes, the emotion I couldn't place, was memory.

She'd had nightmares all night. She'd probably slept on her couch, explaining why she looked slightly stiff. She was terrified of what she'd had nightmares about. She didn't have the typical cups of coffee she generally brought for the rest of us, and there were no remnants of her breakfast, which probably meant she hadn't eaten anything. Most importantly, she didn't want me to know shit about what was going on.

At that moment, I ignored all the obvious signs. I guess I just didn't want to believe it. I knew she had PTSD. I knew it, I could feel it, and I had it too, but I couldn't admit it. Like she knew perfectly well, admitting it happened was the first step to getting over it. However, my reasoning was that, if it didn't happen, you didn't have to get over it.

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**Okay, so I hope you liked it! Please take some time from your busy days to review for me! Reviews=ally happiness. Ally happiness=more writing. More writing=another chapter. YAY!!!!!**


	4. PostTrials pt 1

**I know this one is kinda short. It's got a follow-up chapter that should be coming soon. I started it before I finished this one, you see. Sorry about the long pause between updates. I've been overloaded with Language Arts (Research and Presentation) and tests. I had a research essay about how Nixon's exemplary foreign policy kept people from suspecting him during Watergate, and then I had to type up my 1st 3rd speech outline using said essay. Also, why do all the teachers feel the overwhelming need to pile tests and quizes on their students the week before spring break? TGIF times fifty! OH! If anyone's interested, the latest drama of my life may or may not be described in explicit detail in my new story "How I Hurt". It's Lizzie-centric, maybe because she's closest to my age, and Olivia and Elliot are, as of right now, secondary characters.**

**Disclaimer: I think Dick Wolf changed his phone number again, because when I called five seconds ago, all I got was "This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again." So, everything SVU still belongs to him. I stand in awe of his determination to keep it while being harrassed by these crazy L&O fans who want the rights to his stuff.**

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Poor Olivia.

That was all I could think.

Well, that and _Thank you, God, that I don't have the compulsion to think my thoughts out loud because she'd kill me._

When that Caitlyn girl had appeared in this case, I'd nearly lost my mind as the stupid fucking logic I sometimes wished would disappear popped everything into a picture that, as much as I fucking hated to admit it, made sense. Olivia would go visit Caitlyn. She would realize instantly that the woman had rape trauma syndrome, because why else would she have given her kid away. The two would talk and Olivia would automatically compare herself to Caitlyn and notice similarities between them. And she would finally admit to herself that she had PTSD.

There was no way this was true. She did NOT have PTSD. There was no way in hell she could have PTSD, because as soon as she admitted she had PTSD, I would have to come face to face with the blame that lay directly and solely on me. I would have to confront the fact that, had I fucking skipped out on the TB test sooner, none of this would have happened. I would have to accept that everything Olivia was feeling, seeing, doing, saying in response or relation to her assault was my fault. The worst thing, however, was that I would be forced to take the blame for the problem of her blaming herself. If she got suspended for something that happened on the job that wouldn't have occurred under normal circumstances, I should be the one providing her with money. Not that Cragen would ever take her off the payroll. That would be like disowning his daughter.

No, she couldn't be sick. For my own bastardly fucking selfish reasons, she could not be sick. I would not let her be sick.

So I didn't worry about looking for her when I sat down at my desk in the squad room after the case was over. When 'our new ADA' walked in after court and asked what we did now, I didn't look to see if Liv had any suggestions. And that was why it came as a surprise to me when Kim said, "Where's Olivia?"

I finally directed my gaze at Olivia Benson's desk, which was, surprisingly and upsettingly, empty. Where was she? Where was Liv?

Damn it, this was just like at the prison, except for there was no threat of rape in this situation. I took my eyes off her for one second and she was gone. Lost. Vanished without a fucking trace. Where the hell was she?

"She probably had shopping to do or something," Stabler said, unconcerned.

I wanted to punch him in the face, preferably breaking his jaw so he would shut the hell up. Didn't he pay any attention to his partner? Was he so wrapped up in his perfect little world full of kids and a wife that he couldn't spare one fucking second to check and see where his partner was going? Did he even notice her leave? No! He hadn't known she'd left. He wasn't even sure she'd entered in the first place. No, he was too absorbed in thoughts of his wife, his precious children, that he had no idea of the whereabouts of the woman who he spent more time with than anyone else in his family. At seven o'clock every morning when he comes into work, she's always at her desk and buried in paperwork, a cup of coffee near her arm and a cup of coffee on his calendar, always covering the present day of the week. Sometimes, I would come in to find her sitting at the table generally holding Munch's horrendous concoction, brewing something actually drinkable for us all. Come to think of it, those were the only days, rare and far between, that I never saw a cup of coffee waiting on her stupid partner to meander into work. Elliot would go to crime scenes, the ME's, suspects' and witnesses' homes, and interrogation rooms with her all day, hardly ever leaving her side for more than a second, taking in absolutely everything she does with his eyes, and yet the bastard is completely and totally blind.

I wanted to ask him how he would feel if we got a call in the next five minutes that said Olivia had been raped, and her own partner hadn't cared enough to say anything more interested than 'she went shopping.' But, Liv would undoubtedly kick my ass for even suggesting that, and my sense of self-preservation was developed enough to keep my mouth shut.

Instead, I let it go and asked Greylek what she wanted.

"Just wanted to figure out what the norm is around here," she said shrugging.

Well, wasn't it convenient that the norm around here was to do your damndest not to go fucking insane from all the tragedy you saw every day. I wanted to tell her take her drinks and shove them where she kept her jabs at Casey, but Liv would shoot me down and tell me she was only trying to get to know her new co-workers and that it was probably hard to initiate the outing as the new girl.

So I let Munch say, "Well, we tend to go to Maloney's."

"Yeah," Stabler added. "I'd get a drink with you guys."

Once again, thoughts of Olivia helped me resist the urge to kick the rat bastard in the balls.

"I'm in," Munch said.

"You want me to call Liv, tell her what's going on?" Elliot asked.

Kim nodded, relief clear on her features, but I just had to interrupt. "Nah, don't bother. I'll wait for her," I told them, making no move to get up. Something told me she wasn't going to answer her phone.

"You think she's gonna come back and not just go home?"

Was he as much of an idiot as he looked? "All her stuff's here, Stabler. I'm pretty sure she's coming back."

At least he had the sense to look embarrassed. Humility was a start, I guessed.

Munch, Elliot, and Kim left, promising to wait for us and hold a table big enough, and I was left to my own devices, waiting for Liv to return.

I contented myself with working on paperwork, glancing occasionally at the clock for about an hour. Then I started looking at it more than the white sheet of tedium in front of me. By the end of two hours without any hint of Liv's continued existence, I just gave up on the shit altogether and sat there staring at the clock until my vision blurred and all I could see was white, at which time I blinked exactly three times and repeated the process.

The clock flashed 8:16 and I heard the elevator ding.

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**Again, yes it was short, but the follow-up chapter is coming soon! Seriously! Please review!**


	5. PostTrials pt 2

**Thank you to all who reviewed! The donuts were wonderful (story reference, lol)! This is a continuation of the last chapter. I suppose I could have put it in with the other one, but it really isn't connected except by the time and I would have been afraid of the length. Plus, I'm going to tell myself that I was building suspense! YAY! Anyway, some of you seem to be waiting for an all-out yelling fest between Fin and Liv. I'm sorry, but I don't roll that way. However, it's plenty angsty, and Fin unintentionally provides Liv with some blackmail-type material!**

**Disclaimer: As I am on vacation and have a different phone number, it appears Dick Wolf must be stalking me because I still haven't been able to make him pick up his stupid phone to tell me I can have the rights, so while I nurse my beaten pride, it's all still his.**

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The clock on my desk read 8:17 pm when she finally snuck back into the squad room. She didn't seem to notice me as she made her way to her desk and started stuffing random folders into her bag. She kept her head bent just enough that I could not see her face, concealed as it was by her hair. Her hands were steady, slowly, methodically preparing to leave, and her back was straight and proud, almost defiant, daring anybody to question her.

My original plan was to just watch her and let her escape without a confrontation that, if her silent movements were any indication, she did not want. However, because my luck refused to be that good, I made this decision to be quiet and then had to cough. So I cleared my throat, hating myself as I did so, and she heard me.

"Damn," she whispered. Every muscle in her back and neck stiffened, and she stopped moving completely. Very slowly, she turned to see who was still with her.

When she registered me, there was an inestimable relaxation of her shoulders. "Fin," she said. "What are you still doing here?"

"I stared at her. "Liv, I work here, remember?"

That's not what I meant and you know it." She glanced around, probably wondering if someone else was hiding and waiting to accost her. "Where is everybody?"

"Kim came in. Our partners took her for a celebration drink."

"Why aren't you with them?"

I said I'd wait for you."

"Why?" She walked closer to me and sat down on Munch's desk, keeping her eyes averted.

"Because Kim wanted you to join us, so I was waiting for you to get back from wherever the hell you were. Where were you?" I watched her fingers go rigid against the table.

"Walking," she answered stiffly, her tone effectively closing the discussion. Or so she intended.

"You're not getting away that easy, Liv," I told her. "I'm taking you to Maloney's whether you like it or not, and we can either get this over with here or there."

She glared at me for so long I had to stop myself from making sure I didn't have holes burned into my forehead, but her expression finally crumbled, and she elaborated to get me off her ass. "I left the courtroom and went to Central Park."

Was that honestly the fucking best she could come up with? "Liv, for three hours, all you did was walk in Central Park? How many times did you go around?"

"Twice," she snapped. "What's it to you?"

"I never figured you for one to ask stupid questions, Olivia, but I guess I was wrong. Were you talking to a snail the whole time, or was it a turtle?"

For the second time in as many minutes, I was the target of Olivia Benson's patented I'll-kill-you-because-I-feel-like-it glare. But I was not letting up, especially when I finally met her eyes and swore in every language I knew, soundlessly in my head.

Damn her eyes. The molten brown was surrounded by the faintest hint of red where it should have been white. She had been crying. Bad-ass Benson, the woman who could shoot down the self-esteem of the most better-than-thou perp in existence, had been crying. Shit.

I was up to my eyes in denial, searching for any other explanation that would keep me in the clear. She'd gotten tears in her eyes from a bad break-up, maybe. Or pent-up frustration. Yeah, that was it. She'd just needed a release, and she'd gone to the park because of her stupid, and fucking incorrect, assumption that we'd think any less of her if she cried a little in front of us. Of course that was it. For the sake of my own mental health, that had to be it.

So, when she said, "I was making sure Caitlyn and Tommy were gonna be okay," I believed her.

She finished packing up in silence, and then she allowed me to lead her out of the squad room, into the elevator, outside, and into my car, where I proceeded to drive us to Maloney's. Something told me Olivia was going to be the sober driver tonight, as crazy as that sounded. There was a little voice in my head rationalizing that, whatever she'd done, she didn't want it to come out because of an alcohol-loosened tongue.

And, through all that time, I didn't notice the trails recently-fallen tears had left down her cheeks. I didn't notice how she initiated the banter we engaged in so that she could maneuver the conversation on whim. I didn't notice because, for my own selfish, bastard reasons, I didn't want to.

**LATER AT MALONEY'S**

Sure enough, Liv hadn't swallowed a drop of alcohol the entire time. She and Kim Greylek were apparently planning on being the responsible ones this time, because the DC ADA was very properly sipping he first Jack Daniel's.

When we'd arrived, Liv had found them faster than I had, probably due to that freakish magnetic attraction she had with Elliot that enabled her to find him within seconds, even in the midst of Grand Central's rush hours. She'd hurried straight over and gracefully taken her seat beside Elliot and across from Kim, probably trying to get as far away from me as possible. Well, if she wanted to be like that, fine. I'd driven her here in my car, so she was going to have to work something out with Greylek to get the drunken men home and still have their cars to use in the morning. So, I slid in beside Munch, surprised to see that Cragen was joining us. He had a club soda in front of him and was laughing along with the rest of them.

I really was not interested in arguing baseball teams with Munch, who insisted that the entire series was rigged by the government and that the Yankees always won because the White House was repaying New York for the use of Manhattan during the Manhattan Project. The conversation became interesting, however, when Liv caught wind of Munch's unfounded accusation. One thing that could be said about Liv was that she loved her New York Yankees. I leaned forward in anticipation. Olivia was sober as hell and Munch was in for a verbal ass-whipping like no other.

Elliot and Cragen were grinning like madmen watching Liv beat Munch to a huddled mass of psychological bruises and wounded pride, and Kim observed with interest as her companion shouted at her co-worker. A small smile played across her mouth the whole time, but Olivia's lips never did anything more than twitch upward, even when Munch told her she was blinded by loyalty to the government that had its own agenda and she might benefit from a sight of reality.

Every occupant of the table went absolutely silent.

Munch realized exactly what he'd said and to whom as soon as the words were out of his mouth. His face froze, and his eyes dilated as he dissected every facet of Olivia's expressionless expression.

Cragen bit his lower lip to keep the smirk at bay. Elliot had a hand over his mouth, his head on the table, and he was banging his fist on the wood. For my part, I didn't react, expecting to be delegated the task of picking up whatever was left after Liv got through with my partner. Glancing over at Kim, I discovered that she was still blissfully oblivious to the time bomb that was Olivia Benson. That innocence would be gone in less than five seconds.

"What?" she asked.

Never taking her eyes off Munch, Olivia dipped her fingers into her glass of Coke. She swirled them around and fished out a sole, innocent little ice cube. Very deliberately, she stuck the ice cube in her mouth, pulled it out, and reached over to drop it right into the center of Munch's unfinished beer, sending drops flying up to hit him just below the eye. Liv then turned her head back to Kim, smiled at her, and took a sip of her drink, completely unconcerned.

Silence encompassed our group again, and I was reduced to wondering whether or not she would have done this under other circumstances.

"Damn it, Liv!" Munch cried, shoving his now contaminated drink away and sulking like a child. She watched him with her big brown eyes, looking for all the world like a saint. Saint Olivia. That actually was rather amusing that two opposite nicknames, Bad-ass Benson and Saint Olivia, could both fit so perfectly.

To everyone's surprise, Kim interrupted with, "Well, what did you expect, detective? You didn't actually think you could insult the Yankees and get away with it, did you?"

All attention focused on her, and Olivia raised her hand for a high five. "See, Munch? She agrees with me."

Wisely in my opinion, Munch chose not to voice his opinion on this revelation. Liv let it go, and she and Kim began a discussion on their favorite Yankees players.

Elliot grinned at me. "You know you'd miss this too much if you left."

"What?" Olivia cried, shutting Kim out completely as she directed the full force of her attention on me. "You're staying?"

I nodded and watched the dawn break in Olivia's pain-drowned eyes. It was like seeing the sun come out for the first time after a month of nonstop rain, or a candle in a dark room, and I was getting way to emotional. I grinned at her, glanced at Elliot and said, "_You_ are sure as hell not the one I'd miss." My eyes again fixed on Liv. Though I had not consciously decided that she had PTSD and not just PMS or something, the one part of my subconscious that had not yet been corrupted by my own fucking selfishness was screaming like the public stereotype of a girl, begging me in a very high and annoying voice to open my eyes and see that I needed to be there for Olivia if/when she reached her breaking point.

I wondered if she realized that we were, in the cruelest way possible, bound to each other now. That sounded really stupid, but it rang with that damn truth I just couldn't seem to escape. I could no more leave than cut my soul in half. Seeing as my soul wasn't even a physical item, there really was no difficulty there. As soon as she'd been cuffed and led out of wherever the hell all the inmates had been kept, as soon as I'd realized she was gone, as soon as I'd walked in on the fucking shit-eating bastard with his pants down, shoving himself in her helpless, tear-streaked, hopeless, agonized, fucking terrified face, we'd been linked by that stupid thing called trauma. Who was the idiot who'd thought up the idea of 'bonded by trauma'? I wanted to shove their head up their ass and watch them suffocate. Once I'd seen Olivia Benson, the woman I worked with every day and had once watched pull a chair from underneath a suspect and kick him in the ribs too many times to count before Cragen and Elliot pulled her off him, absolutely helpless, cuffed to a door, curled up in a little ball, pressed against the unyielding metal, face clutched in his worthless hands, _scared for her life_, there was no way I could leave her. If she wasn't the one who needed me, I was the one who needed her. Half of the problem was that I was to blame for everything she'd gone through. What kind of friend could I consider myself if I just up and left after that? A really fucking pathetic one, that's what kind.

"Fin? Hey, man, snap out of it!" Fingers snapped in front of my eyes and I jumped about a foot in the air. Damn, that must be what a flashback was. I apologized without meaning it, fixing my stare on Liv, who was looking at me with a mixture of confusion, disbelief, recognition, and sympathy.

"You okay?" she mouthed.

I could have eaten my gun. I was having flashbacks about _her_ near rape and here she was asking me if I was alright. "Yeah," I mouthed back. She raised her eyebrows skeptically but didn't pursue the subject, for which I was grateful. Maybe this was what she was experiencing in some higher degree of magnitude. Suddenly that ride home with her sounded much less appealing.

Kim claimed the woman's attention again, and I went back to arguing politics with Munch, who seemed determined to convince me that I was an unwitting player in a conspiracy involving Republicans, World War 3, and the possibility of aliens on Mars. How desperately I wished I'd brought a tape recorder for this. We'd play it at his funeral and his ghost would appear, saying God had confirmed everything he'd ever told us. I chuckled softly at this, and then explained myself when Munch asked what was so funny.

* * *

The night wore on, and by eleven thirty five I was wobbling on the borderline between buzzed and drunk. I was also done with alcohol. True to my intuition, Kim had stopped at one, and Olivia was still content with her Coke.

Cragen stood suddenly and told us we'd better get home because we would be expected at the precinct bright and early tomorrow. We got up to leave and he said we'd better figure out some sort of carpooling system because he didn't want us guys anywhere near a steering wheel. Kim looked torn between wanting to help and wanting to get home, and Olivia just waited in silence. A slight argument ensued and it was finally agreed that Elliot would take a cab to Queens, mostly because no one wanted to drive all the way out to the mainland tonight. I think Olivia's words were: "I refuse to deign to drive my mainlander partner out to his home when I could spend the rest of my night quietly in Manhattan instead." Elliot had said something back to her, and she had smacked him upside the head. He then agreed to take a cab. Through the whole exchange, Kim was grinning. Before I could finish weighing the pros and cons of Olivia driving me home, Cragen said he would take Munch and no one else. He told Kim to just go home, and I realized my choice had just been made for me. To be fair, Liv didn't look too happy about it either.

We waited while Kim got her car, while Cragen all but stuffed Munch into the passenger seat of his car, and then left when we realized we were alone.

The minute the key turned in the ignition, Liv turned the radio on, soft enough to not be considered blasting but loud enough to make normal conversation awkward. I'd tried turning it down once. Just once.

Every mile of the way to my apartment, I reminded myself of what she was silently telling me. She wouldn't ask me about my unexpected zoning at Maloney's, and in return her actions before 8:17 pm would remain questions stuck halfway to my vocal cords.

When I felt the seatbelt restraining me, a sure sign we were stopping, she put away her phone, having just called a cab to take her back to the precinct. The radio was off. We were both getting out. It was now or never. "Liv?" She turned her burning eyes on me, but I managed to not back down. "What happened to you after the trial?"

She stared unfathomably at me for the longest time. Finally, I received an answer. "What happened to you at Maloney's?"

_Well played, detective,_ I thought unhappily. _Well played. _"Nothing," I said.

"Nothing," she reiterated, answering my question.

The cab pulled up behind her. "Night, Fin," she said. "Bright and early tomorrow."

"Bright and early tomorrow," I mocked quietly. I watched the taxi drive her away. I would need a lot more to get her to talk to me.

**16****TH**** PRECINCT**

I wandered into the 1-6 bright and early as commanded, and I stopped dead in the doorway when my eyes fell on the four empty desks in the squad room. Three empty desks I was okay with, but _four?_ Where was Liv?

The softest, most terrifying sound I'd ever heard registered in my brain. Someone had whimpered. Someone with Olivia's voice had whimpered. I raced up to the crib.

Olivia was curled up on one of the crappy beds, twitching and moaning, tears visible on her cheeks. Before I'd even registered this, I was kneeling by the bed. My hand reached out and rested on her shoulder, and her eyes snapped open. What happened next happened so fast I blinked and missed it. Her hands wrapped around my arm in a vice-like grip and twisted. I clenched my teeth against the pain and waited for her to recognize me. "Liv, Olivia. It's me. It's Fin. You're okay, it's just me."

She kept my arm at her mercy for a moment longer and then released it, leaving me to massage the elbow while she flushed deep scarlet. "Sorry, Fin," she finally muttered. "Bad dream."

I let her tell me that, walking back down to the squad room and waiting for her to change clothes. As I started work on my latest DD-5, I focused on erasing the scene I'd just witnessed from my head. I knew I'd just witnessed the definition of a Special Victim, why we were needed, but I didn't want to. Blissful oblivion was just that. Blissful.

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**And the verdict is...........in the review that I know you're going to leave because you just love me so much, right? hint hint nudge nudge! So, for the next chapter, I think I'm going to skip over to the next moving episode I can think of......uh........ I think my order is going to be Lunacy, Wildlife, Persona, PTSD, and then Smut and take it from there. If anyone was wondering about Fin's knowledge of Olivia's PTSD, he knows deep down that she's sick, but he doesn't want to believe it because then he would have no choice but to blame himself for everything, and he likes being free of that burden. He'll come to terms with it, don't worry! Review! Please! I want my donut!**

**BTW, if you're a first-time reader and curious about the donut references, check out my Garden of Eden story! Yes, I am using this as publicity.**

**Over and out! **


	6. Post Lunacy

**Angst is something this doesn't have too much of, and it doesn't focus all that much on Sealview I don't think, but it provides what I consider a welcome relief from Fin's agonizing (and very imaginative) thoughts. If you want to know where the towels and bucket came from and what Fin's locker combination is, I suggest you chalk it up to author's creative privilege. With all due respect, suck it up. No offense intended. See? I've got you hooked now, don't I? Mwahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You know, one of the reasons this doesn't have much Sealview in it is because there wasn't much Sealview in the episode. To be quite honest, I wasn't sure whether or not I was even going to do this episode, but I was too lazy to go back and edit my AN from the last chapter. So, here you go.**

**Disclaimer: Nothing cute. Everything SVU is Dick Wolf's. To be safe, so is Google.**

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When Dick Finley was escorted into the squad room by a bruised and bloody Elliot Stabler and a dressed up Olivia Benson, I thought the world had gone mad.

Something, a pencil I think, hit me in the shoulder and I turned to see Munch staring at me. "Punch me," he said. "I'm finally going crazy."

I shook my head. "Man, you went crazy a long time ago."

Munch shrugged unconcernedly. Elliot, Olivia, and their prisoner disappeared into booking, and I tried to find my sanity so I could finish my stupid paperwork. Something told me this new development was going to result in a hell of a lot more DD-5s. After a while, however, it became apparent that I had lost my sanity.

"Damn it, Munch, where'd my sense of reality go?"

I should have known better than to ask him that. "Well, Odafin, your sense of reality never actually existed. Reality, you see, is all the government's illusion of normalcy. It doesn't exist, but they pretend it does because they want to keep their oblivious civilians happy while they steal all the gas and money and blame it on the economy, which is actually a whole other conspiracy involving Hawaiian sugar, Sarah Palin, and the story of the man—"

"Not another stupid conspiracy theory, Munch," Olivia interrupted, reentering the room in some fancy dress she'd probably been wearing for tonight's date.

John reacted with indignance. "It is not stupid, Olivia. Every theory I educate you with is based on solid fact."

"Yeah, solid fact that has been—" Elliot began,

"Hopelessly distorted to fit your own senile mind," Olivia and Elliot finished in unison.

I stared and blinked like an imbecile. Even Munch went quiet.

"What?" they asked together. Both heads turned at the same time and they laughed, causing me to blink faster. Olivia was laughing. When was the last time I'd heard that? Was she suddenly, miraculously cured? No, my luck couldn't be that good. Her laugh wasn't the same. There was a bitter edge to it, like those sour Skittles I had in my desk from a hundred years ago. Still…

"So, did Dick Finley bleed on your shoes or what?" Munch asked.

"Yeah," Elliot said. "I had to make him apologize."

And all my hopes went down the drain.

Back stiff, Olivia took Marga Jansen's file from her desk and shoved it roughly at Munch. "Case closed," she said and went back over to the holding cell probably to verbally abuse Elliot's former friend until the sun rose high in the sky.

Munch stared. "Is it her time of the month or something?"

"Never heard of mood swings, Munch?" I demanded angrily.

Once again, he stared.

Finally I heard, "Now, I know you're not a girl." He handed me the file and left. "I'm going home!" he called over his shoulder.

I was left with an angry Stabler, which was not the best position for me to be in. When he was like this I was always surprised that smoke wasn't furling out of his nose, but I wanted to know what had happened. "So, what _did_ he do?"

"He killed Marga Jansen," Elliot began, positively trembling with rage, "he misled us through this entire case, and he had the nerve to not only shake my son's hand, but ask Olivia on a date. She showed up at his place, all dressed up, and she saw me putting him in the car."

"Yeah, in her defense, she took it very well," Olivia said, reentering the vicinity and completing the triangle. "He was very rude, though. Not even a break-up notice. I'm insulted. And, Elliot, it was not a date, it was a friendly get-together. I asked if he wanted you to come along, he implied that you'd have more fun taking care of your kids. I didn't want to let him down."

"You don't have to defend yourself, Liv."

"I'm not. I'm just making sure you get your facts straight."

"Just because you didn't consider it a date doesn't mean he didn't."

"Well, it never happened, did it, Elliot? So suck it up!"

It was like watching a table tennis match. The conversation just went back and forth and back again. Neither of them raised their voices above normal tone, and neither of them seemed angry, but someone seemed to not realize that they were not in a therapy session. They kept at it, reminding me for all the world of something I'd walked in on a while ago: an argument between Elliot and Kathy. But then, it had been obvious for a while now that Liv and Elliot acted so much like a husband and wife it was scary; ready to tear each other's eyes out on minute, completely violating any sense of each other's personal space the next. It was both maddening and peaceful, depending on the day. These days it was more maddening.

"You're so gullible that you can't even protect yourself—I have to do it for you!"

And my plans to stay away from the hospital went down the drain, too. I swear I didn't think I had that much left that would fit down there.

Olivia's face could have been chiseled from ice and plopped down on a marble statue called _Righteous Kill._ All three of us were remembering past cases at the speed of light. I watched in my mind's eye as Elliot yelled at her, _I can't do this anymore. I can't keep looking over my shoulder and making sure you're okay!_ That had not ended well. In my mind, I watched my gun rise in front of my eyes. Harris turned around and started making excuses. Olivia seared my soul with that cursed fear I had become unpleasantly familiar with. I had protected her. If I looked at it from an unemotional observer's point of view, Olivia had been gullible and couldn't protect herself, so I'd had to do it for her.

Damn it to fucking hell.

Liv looked too stunned to even blink, much less come up with one of her famous bad-ass retorts, so my brotherly instinct took over and I found one for her.

"Stabler, I remember _you_ being the one needing saving. Justify yourself saying that to her."

Eyes flitting between me and her partner, Liv watched as the tension in the room went from 27.5% to 100% to 5000% in a matter of seconds.

Elliot exploded. "Is that what you did in Sealview, Tutola? Save her ass? 'Cause that's what you're doing now! You're saving her ass because she can't think of something to say because she knows it's true!"

"Stabler, haven't we already established that anything relating to Sealview is none of your concern?"

"It is, for God's sake, if it's got something to do with my partner's safety!"

"Not if it took place during a top-secret undercover operation that you have nothing to do with!"

"Fuck it!" Stabler came barreling straight at me, and his fist connected with my nose.

I heard it crack. I heard it fucking crack, and I lost it. Damn him. Shit, that hurt! My hands flew of their own accord, catching him in the gut. Hot, red liquid flowed down my face and sickeningly into my mouth. He had this coming to him for a long time. He deserved every ounce of pain I caused him. We both backed off to get better aim, and someone screamed.

"Shit, damn it, fucking STOP IT!" Olivia yelled at the top of her lungs. Her blue-clad body was instantly blocking my view of Elliot Stabler, and my fist screeched to a halt inches from her face. I obediently dropped my hands and watched the woman in front of me, saving her partner from certain destruction at my hands, and saving both of us from major deep water with IAB and Cragen. Stabler's attack didn't have the same quick reflexes. His knuckles crashed into her side with all the power to make my nose bleed. "OUCH! Fuck, Elliot!" Olivia clutched her side, bent over. I started forward with every intention of killing him in the worst way possible, but her one hand shot out and caught me in the chest. "If you come any closer right now," she said through clenched teeth, "I swear I will kill you."

I stopped in my tracks, waiting impatiently for her hand to cease in its putting pressure on my chest.

Stabler's face could only be described as aghast, which was a word that, from what Munch rambled on about from time to time, this Brian Cassidy idiot would memorize from the dictionary the night before just to impress Olivia. I also knew about the rumors behind Cassidy's apparent outburst, but that was something I tried not to think about.

"Liv! I'm so sorry, are you okay?" Stabler started forward with a contrite look on his face.

Well, she wasn't having that. "Stop where you are, Stabler," she ordered, "if you value your life."

He stopped.

Taking her time, Liv straightened up, still holding her side, stretched a little, wincing in pain as she did, and sighed. She turned to me. "Boys, if I get something to keep Fin from dying of blood loss, will you manage to stay at least four feet away from each other at all times until I get back?" She glanced at Stabler, whose guilt was rolling off him in waves. "Insert answer here."

"Yes, Mom," we both said. Her lips twitched, and she left, probably for ice.

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers and went over to my computer. Liv was too good at this. It had to be more than learned technique. Was that stupid Fate making its rounds again? I brought up trusty old Google and typed in _Olivia meaning._ I clicked on the first thing that didn't sound long and boring. After staring at the subsequent site for a few minutes, I laughed.

"What?" Stabler asked, unable to come any closer because of his Olivia-delivered parole agreement.

"I'll move," I answered. "You've got to see this."

So I backed off and he walked over, carefully preserving the distance between us, to look at the computer screen and read the information out loud. "Olivia," he said. "Of Latin origin. Meaning of the olive tree. A symbol of peace."

He met my eyes with some difficulty. "How appropriate," I finally said.

That was when Liv came back, bearing ice, towels, and an amused smile. Placing the fucking _bucket_ of ice on Munch's unoccupied desk, she placed an unfolded towel beside it and began filling it with ice cubes. She turned to us, still studiously remaining the required distance away from each other, and called, "Stabler. Come here."

Elliot hurriedly approached her. She wrapped the towel around the billion or so ice cubes she'd stuffed in there and pressed it against his ribs with perhaps a little more force than necessary. I guess I hit a little higher than his gut. Welldangit, I missed. I'd shed tears over it later, surely. Once laughing made me feel too heartless. With his face twisted, he took the makeshift icepack from her and held it to his left side, and she turned to me.

Her teasing eyes sized me up for a moment before digging through her stack of towels and coming up with one of my shirts. Where the hell did she get that?

"I've known your locker combination since before you were born," she said in answer to my unspoken question.

That made me laugh. "Then you must have been a really smart fetus, Liv, because I was born before you."

She bit her lip to hold back a smile, which pissed me off because was it really so hard to show me she was still human, and then she tossed me the shirt and another thing of ice. I changed my top while she modestly averted her eyes, and then I was obliged to hold still because she was by my side faster than I would have thought possible, prodding my nose with sensitive fingers. "It's not broken," she announced, "but it looks like it should be painful."

"Well, I'm glad to see your eyesight's still good."

"Naturally. Anyway, keep this on it and I won't make you go to the hospital. Now sit," she pushed me into my chair, "and let me get that blood off your face. It doesn't go with your skin tone."

Behind her, Elliot snorted with laughter and then winced and grabbed at his ribs. She barely spared him a glance. "Serves you right," she said. "I have no sympathy for you." And she proceeded to use a wet washcloth to make my face less macabre and more skin tone compatible. Where the hell had that even come from, anyway?

* * *

A half-hour later, I yawned for a whole thirteen seconds and Liv stood up.

"I'm going home," she said authoritatively. "I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I really need to get out of this dress. Don't do anything with Finley until tomorrow because I want to help. Bear in mind that if one of you turns up dead in the next few hours, I'm not going to take sleepwalking as an answer. Clear?" Her eyes sparked with a mixture of mocking and threats.

"Crystal," we answered in unison.

She started out the door and I followed her. "What?" she asked. I swear, I missed this Olivia. Nowadays, I only caught glimpses of her once in a while.

I unflinchingly met her gaze and said with a completely straight face and every appearance of solemnity, "So I don't have to use the sleepwalking excuse tomorrow."

Smiling that annoying little half-smile of hers, she walked with me out of the precinct.

**________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

**So I hope you liked it. If you were really looking forward to Fin tearing his nonexistent hair out in anguished indecision and pain, look on the bright side! You can satisfy your sadistic desires in your own fanfiction. JUST KIDDING!!! Seriously, jk. Please don't kill me. Wildlife is next! Lots of angsty drama goodness. If I apologize again, will you leave a review? Pleeeeeeeeeeeease? Pretty pretty please with a cherry on top?**

**Love you all! Thanks for the support!**

**~ally**


	7. Wildlife pt 1

**I'm sorry it's taken such a long time to update, but I've been really really busy with schoolwork and stuff. This one is a lot more of a missing piece of the episode than Fin's insights, but it's got a bit of that in there too, so please enjoy!**

**BTW, this is another two-part. The second half is going to depict Bushido's court trial for attempted murder of a police officer. Olivia and Elliot are both going to testify!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!**

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The phone rang.

I picked it up.

"Tutola. Manhattan SVU."

Oh. My. Dear. God.

I would swear on my life that my heart stopped and restarted at least five times in the course of the brief, blunt information conveyed over the phone in record time. Oh, dear God. Not now. Not when she was gone. Not when I would have to call her, disturb some much-needed sleep probably, and tell her the one thing she'd never ever want to hear.

"Okay, we'll be right there."

I hung up the phone, my heart racing at ninety plus miles an hour. "Captain!" I yelled, not caring about etiquette at the moment. "Cap, Elliot's been shot. Someone called a bus and someone else called us. We've gotta get down there!"

Apparently I was a little behind in the times, because by the time I'd finished speaking Cragen and John were halfway out the door. Wasting no time, I ran after them. I must have blinked and missed the run outside, because the next thing I knew we were all jam packed into Cragen's car and my cell phone was still in my hand. I stared at it, wishing it would disappear. If only it would go away. Then this wouldn't be an issue at all and we could all get on with our lives without her being any the wiser. But of course, my life didn't work that way.

The radio was off. The silence was palpable. The tension couldn't have been gouged open with a diamond-tipped drill. Finally, I voiced what we were all thinking. "So…who wants to call Liv?"

No one answered. No one even blinked.

Damn it. Damn it to fucking hell. I pulled up my speed dial and selected the first number on there.

This was going to be a fun phone call.

* * *

We pulled over to the curb before even the ambulance got there. I think Cragen must have tied a lead weight to his foot, because the speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the entire time. Lucky for the street cops, we weren't caught. There probably would have been a few injuries.

Olivia hadn't picked up her cell, and I'd only called her once. I just valued my life over her enlightenment. There went my own fucking selfish desires again.

We ducked under the yellow tape and practically ran over to the huddled mass on the ground. The prone form lying spread-eagled on the concrete was Elliot. He was the only one injured. There was a person kneeling beside him. This person's left hand was cradling Elliot's head as best it could under the circumstances of not being able to move him, and their right hand was pressing down hard on a beige jacket that was crumpled on top of Elliot's arm and steadily gathering blood. There was no finger on a pulse. Did one even exist anymore? This person's shoulders were shaking, but their back was stiff. Their head was fixated on Elliot's face, never wavering an inch, and when their short brown hair fell into their face, they swung it out of the way just like Liv always did.

Oh.

My.

God.

Fuck.

Shit.

Damn.

Hell.

Short brown hair.

Toss it out of the way just like Liv did.

Oh, my God.

Olivia.

All three of us stood absolutely still, having just realized exactly who this was at exactly the same time. She hadn't noticed us as of yet, and the best gift on Earth would be to keep it that way. Olivia Benson was bent over Elliot Stabler's unmoving body, holding him, whispering to him, and trying to stop the bleeding that was coming relentlessly from two fucking bullet holes in his fucking body.

The ambulance arrived, sirens blazing and EMTs pouring out, and I wanted to shoot them all. We'd gotten here before them. We of the 1-6 had arrived at the scene before the fucking ambulance!

I could finally make out Olivia's murmured words to her fallen partner.

"Elliot? El, stay awake. Please, El, don't close your eyes. Stay awake. Stay with me. Please. Elliot, stay. Stay alive. Don't go to sleep. Don't leave me. Please."

And I remembered the hopes and safety that had gone down the drain as I watched my broken heart chase after them. I added another reason to shoot the EMTs. They were going to move Olivia away from her critically-injured best friend.

EMTs were all over, trying to get Elliot onto a gurney. "Ma'am, you have to let him go. We have to take him to the hospital." They were carefully avoiding coming in physical contact with Olivia, most likely because she had that look in her eye that said, 'touch me and you're dead'. That look amused me because it was so damn funny.

Olivia stood robotically and watched as her partner was loaded onto a stretcher and vanished into the ambulance. Sirens blazing again, it took off into the night towards Mercy Hospital and she turned around, very slowly, having just sensed our presence. I sucked in a breath.

That drain must have been getting really clogged by now, because I think my soul followed my heart.

She was wearing a black shirt and faded jeans. Both were stained with Elliot's blood, and it was surprisingly more noticeable on the black than one would expect. Her bare hands and arms, pale in the strobe lights, were absolutely covered in blood, as was her neck. She must have put her head on his heart at some point. But it was her face that killed me. Red eyes stood out on her luminous face, tear streaks marked her cheeks. Her expression was desolate, stunned, and full of fucking guilt. She looked like she wanted to die.

I went over to her and pulled her into my arms, ignoring the fact that she probably didn't want to be hugged at the moment. She needed it. Sure enough, she stiffened momentarily before relaxing against my chest and crying.

"Hey, girl," was all I could think of to say. "Hey, baby girl. Shh…hush, Liv…shh."

Munch came up behind her and mussed her hair. After speaking to someone of authority about something pertaining to the crisis unfolding before us, Cragen joined his three remaining detectives and placed his hands on Olivia's shoulders, silently hoping to give her strength.

This moment was something straight out of a children's book. Something tragic happens and the friends of the victim huddle around each other, sharing courage and hope through silence and a touch. And to think I'd always found those stories cheesy. At this moment, Olivia Benson was locked away somewhere in a corner of her mind. All that was left was Liv, the absolute best friend of the victim of an attempted (I would not say successful) homicide and also the first to the scene, the one who had held her bleeding friend in her arms and tried (SUCCESSFULLY, please, God) to save him. She wasn't our fellow detective, she was our sister. Not our sister in blue, our blood relative little sister, and she was desperately in need of a little brotherly affection, and a little bit of fatherly love, which Cragen seemed to provide fairly well for not having any kids. Well, unless you counted us.

We couldn't have stood there for more than a minute or two, but it seemed like that was what we all needed. A little time to just be there for one of our own while she took out a portion of her anger and sorrow on the world. Olivia had just been put through a blender set resolutely on Ice Crush these past few months. First Robert Morton and his evil pizza of death, then Elliot going temporarily blind, then almost dying in a car crash with Kathy, then Lauren Cooper's freak suicide in front of her and Lake, then her incident with adoption, then stupid fucking Sealview, then her break-up with reporter Kurt Moss, then that asshole Merritt Rook, then that almost-as-much-of-an-asshole Dick Finley, and now this. Damn, she'd had a hell of a time recently. How much more could she take? My arms tightened around her of their own accord and I silently prayed that she would be okay.

And then the moment was over. Liv pulled herself out of my embrace and looked each one of us full in the face. Her skin was still tearstained, but the liquid was gone from her eyes, leaving only red as evidence they'd been there. "I'm going to the hospital," she said, and ran for her car, which I only just noticed was parked across the street from Cragen's.

Munch blinked. "You know, this could all be a conspiracy—"

"Shut up, Munch!"

It was one of the few times I said something in exact unison with the captain.

* * *

Something I'd always wondered was why the hospital waiting room chairs were so fucking uncomfortable.

According to the innocent civilian we'd run into on the way to the hospital, a woman in a black car had blown past at something way past the speed limit and the civilian, her name was Tracy, had taken down Liv's license plate number in hopes of getting an inconsiderate lawbreaker off the streets.

So, after that minor clear-up, we were waiting for Olivia to come back from bullying her way into the operation room so we could arrest her. My foot was tapping out a rhythm fifty times as fast as a drumroll. Munch was pounding a hole in the wall with his fingers. Don looked like he was praying. There was a problem with that, though, and that problem was that he tended not to pray. Well, he could have been cursing Bushido in a variety of different languages. He must have been taking lessons from Olivia, because she was the one who knew the most languages. Spanish and French she was fluent in, and she seemed to enjoy Mirandizing foreign perps in Hungarian, Russian, and Italian. Surely, if she could Mirandize them, she could cuss them out, too. Like that one guy who absolutely refused to speak in anything but foreign languages, and did he know a lot of them. Since his favorite had been French, Olivia had spent hours at a time saying God-knows-what in an interrogation room. When the evidence was sufficient, she'd gone with me to his apartment and proceeded to (I think) swear like a sailor at him before reading him his rights in what she'd told me was Russian. She'd asked if he'd understood in Italian, and he'd replied snappily in Hungarian.I watched the whole thing like an idiot, not understanding anything at all.

Once I realized my mind was rambling, I tried to refocus on the situation at hand. Coming up with all the ways I could kill Bushido seemed like a good idea, so I commenced doing that. Munch asked me what I was doing, and then if he could join me. _So,_ we spent the damned longest two hours I've ever experienced trying to decide whether being shoved through a sawmill or letting his stupid tigers eat him was more satisfying. I had to admit, locking him in his warehouse with the animals and seeing how long he lasted sounded rather appealing, but I would have to ask Liv when she came out to the waiting room. If she came out at all. So far, I'd gotten her vague whereabouts, defined as somewhere in the hospital, from a very irritated desk clerk. Knowing her, she'd threatened and pushed her way into the emergency room and/or intensive care unit and had absolutely no intention of coming out any time soon.

Which was why it took about a minute to register her gory form exiting ICU and coming straight towards us.

Her eyes were still red, and she looked a little shaky, like she'd seen more than she'd ever wanted to. The unshakable Olivia Benson was so shaken she could hardly stand upright. Well, that added to the fact that she was probably so tired she was liable to fall asleep on her feet. Worse, the 1-6's revenge would be tacking on an attempted murder of a police officer charge to Bushido's steadily-growing list of charges, and Olivia, being the only witness to probably much more than we could guess, would have to testify. That would be interesting.

Voice barely audible but strong all the same, she said, "He'll be fine."

And that was when Kathy strode through the door, the fire in her eyes burning into Olivia, whose back stiffened. She turned ever so slowly to face her partner's wife. "Kathy, I—"

"This is your fault!" Kathy cried. "You went to see him, and he got shot! How could you let this happen? He could have _died!_ IT'S YOUR FAULT!" Now, I had never seen Kathy mad before, and I had only seen Olivia scared once, but I guess there was a first—or second—time for everything. Elliot's petite wife seemed to grow to five times her height, and Olivia, while she didn't shrink, all the confidence she exuded in a glowing bubble around her person just contracted inside her until she looked like she was going to cry.

She took a deep breath and her eyes closed briefly. "Kathy, I'm sorry."

Kathy glared at her. "You should be! How is he?" she asked in the same angry tone.

"He'll be fine."

"What room?"

"210."

Suspicious, like she didn't know why Olivia was freely giving up this information, Kathy met Olivia's eyes. "Stay away from him," she ordered and brushed past her.

Munch, Cragen, and I were absolutely stunned. There was nothing popping into my head except Oh, my God. And then I remembered how to feel sympathy, and I actually registered Olivia standing stock-still where Kathy had left her. When I looked closer, I realized there was a lone, solitary tear trickling down her cheek. I wanted so badly to get up and comfort her, but for two reasons I didn't. First, she would put me in a bed next to Elliot if I tried. Second, she bit her barely-trembling lower lip and strode out the front doors of the hospital.

I glanced at John. "Great," I said. "Just great."

**_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

**So? How'd you like it? I know some would say it's Kathy's fault for making Olivia promise to make Elliot call her in the first place, but I think she knows that and it determined to blame someone else because she can't deal with being responsible for her husband's almost-death, so she blames Olivia. Remember, she's not a cop. She doesn't have the emotional discipline to deal with that kind of guilt.**

**Please review! I would love you for the rest of my life!!!!!!maybe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**

**Coming up next: Wildlife pt 2, PTSD, Smut**

**Okay, a quick notice. Thank you to all the people who have reviewed so far, and a special thanks to those who have alerted me to some troubles. So what happened was: I was using the Comment application on Microsoft Word so I could go back and edit and stuff, and I forgot to take them off before I uploaded, so the comments came with the chapter, and they appeared in the story three times, wherever I made a comment. So, I apologize for the confusion I have caused, and I promise I'm never using the Comment button again because I now hate it almost as much as the review game we played in History class today.**


	8. Wildlife pt 2

**Sorry it took me a while to update, but, if it's any consolation, this thing is majorly long! Now, I don't know if Bushido actually went to trial (I mean, if he did it'd be a pretty crappy case) but, chalking it up to creative privilege, he did and Olivia had to testify. You know, I really hate Bushido's court-appointed defender. You'll see why, I suppose.**

**Disclaimer: Honestly, Dick Wolf has been changing his phone number every day. Wait....oh....O.M.G. is that...no, it couldn't be. Except that it is! Oh, my gosh, he's *insert action of your choice here* with Hillary Duff! Well, until he deigns to answer my phone calls or I take on his identity, SVU is still his. I own nothing but this computer on which I post my fanfiction.**

**Eh bien, voila.**

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Kim Greylek was Miss Detached in the courtroom during this trial. Normally she showed at least a little passion, like when she was yelling at that Susan woman about her HIV issue and her daughter Lisa. Not today. Today she was calm and laid back, probably because this was an open-and-shut case that couldn't possibly be a defense victory. If Bushido had just taken a plea bargain instead of insisting he wasn't to blame for Elliot's injuries, we wouldn't be here right now, and I wouldn't have to hear her say, "The people call Detective Olivia Benson."

There she was. She was cool and collected, striding in with her head held high, but something in her eyes told me she had something she really didn't want to talk about. I knew as well as Cragen that we hadn't gotten the whole story, but I'd assumed we'd gotten the important parts out of her with no trouble. What was she afraid to say?

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

"I do." Nothing in her voice indicated that she was nervous, but that damned sparkle in her eye just wouldn't let me breathe.

Kim stayed seated at the prosecutor's table. "Detective, could you please tell the jury what it is you do for a living?"

Olivia kept her eyes on the jury, making contact with every single one as she spoke. "I'm a Special Victims Unit detective for the NYPD. We investigate sex crimes."

"And this involves undercover operations?"

"At times, yes."

"Was there an undercover operation going on with regard to the defendant?"

Turning her eyes to Bushido, Olivia replied, "Yes. We'd received a tip-off that a rape victim had been involved with animal smuggling under Andre Bushido's order. My partner went undercover as a dirty customs official to expose the smuggling ring."

The attorney's pace was measured as she stood and walked towards Liv. "Clarify something for me, detective. By Andre Bushido, you mean the defendant?" She gestured towards Bushido.

"Yes."

"What do you mean when you say 'dirty customs official'?"

" 'Dirty' is the term cops use to describe law enforcement officials, generally street officers, who have gone to the other side of the law…They might've taken up drug trafficking, smuggling, and the like."

She nodded her thanks and continued, "So what happened when your partner went undercover? What did you do?"

Kim was hitting near the nail now—the thing Olivia wanted to avoid.

"When we sent Elliot to meet Bushido, we gave him a fake ID, wallet, credit cards, cell phone, all that jazz, to make sure he wouldn't be discovered, and we rented him out an apartment to use for the duration of the assignment. Everything seemed to be going perfectly until we started calling his cell phone and couldn't get hold of him. The same thing happened to the apartment's phone. This wasn't that big of a problem; we knew where he was and could put a tail on him if necessary. However, without a phone he couldn't call his wife, and I assumed she would be getting worried. So I drove to her home and told her why her husband wasn't returning her calls."

"And what did she say to you?"

"She said in essence that she couldn't take the stress of being a police officer's wife anymore and she was going to leave. I asked her to stay, and I told her I would make sure Elliot called her. This seemed to calm her down, and she agreed to wait for Elliot to call."

"You promised to make sure Elliot called her?"

"Yes."

"What did you do next?"

Olivia took a deep breath and her eyes flickered to Bushido and back. I glanced over and saw an amused smirk on his face, just visible enough to make me draw up old memories of things I'd wanted to do to Lowell Harris and put copies in his folder. That castration with an Ebola-infected knife never seemed to get old.

"I went to where Elliot was staying to give him my cell phone. He pulled me into the apartment and, when someone started knocking on the door asking to be let in, he told me to hide. Obviously there's nowhere to hide in an apartment, so I waited in the bathroom and listened. I hear Bushido find my jacket, so I now have to think up a reason for why I was there." I watched the slightest pink tinge heat her cheeks, and I realized this must be what she didn't want to talk about. My mind went two hundred miles an hour, trying to figure out why this would be awkward, but the only excuse I could think of for a woman being in a single man's house that late at night was…My eyes widened with realization. Oh. _That_ must have been interesting. Sure enough: "Being in my profession, the first thing that comes to mind is…hooker, so, when Bushido and Elliot entered his bedroom, I…pretended to be a prostitute."

She cleared her throat softly and glanced again at Bushido, who was attempting to hide his grin. I watched in disgust as his eyes closed and a reminiscent smile appeared on his mouth. The sudden urge to misuse my gun in an unforgivable way was almost too tempting. Sliding it carefully out of its holster, I made to pass it to John beside me, only to see him doing the same thing. A reluctant smirk showed on my face.

"You're watching him, too?" I asked.

Munch nodded, disgust evident in his forehead and eyes. "Unfortunately."

Olivia was talking again, so we returned our guns to our belts and listened. It was one of those habits we couldn't seem to break. When Olivia Benson spoke, your ears were attentive and focused. "The exchange was short. I was told to leave, so I waited in my car for Bushido to leave. He did, but Elliot was with him. Assuming this wasn't part of the plan, I followed the car they got into." I couldn't help but notice that Liv had completely avoided giving any details on the exchange in the bedroom. That thought was disturbing, even in my head. I knew Elliot and Olivia, and their partnership was something else, but that something else wasn't romantically related. Especially when they were undercover and in the presence of a pissed off animal smuggler and murderer. That would be just plain fucked up. No pun intended.

Breaking in at this point, thankfully, Kim prompted, "So you followed the car. What happened then?"

"I was waiting near the head of the alley they'd gone into, and I heard shots. I arrived on the scene to find civilians gathered around what I could see was Elliot's body. I called for an ambulance and tried to stop the bleeding. He had been shot twice, once in his chest and once in his arm."

I vividly remembered how I'd found her bent over her partner and holding back tears as she pressed her hands against the bullet holes and kept him alive until the ambulance finally got there. She'd looked absolutely terrified, like the one thing that kept her going was sliding out of her grasp, and she was trying with all her might to keep him with her.

Kim continued her line of questioning, running through the whole chain of events up to Bushido's location and subsequent arrest. We'd all spoken to her the night before the trial and told her not to say anything about "Tybor" because we couldn't commit perjury, so she just let Liv go with the vague "I was chasing an accomplice" and move on. Thankfully.

My mind ended up not focusing so much on Liv's words as on her expressions. She talked and talked, and I noticed that, when she was remembering the airport, she seemed a little annoyed about something. I made a mental note to ask her about that later.

One thing I admired in Olivia was how collected and detached she was on the stand. From what I'd gathered about them ten years ago, before I'd joined, Munch had cracked too many shitty jokes for the prosecutor to be anyone's first choice of witness, and that idiot of a kid Cassidy—was that his name? Brian Cassidy?—didn't know cheese from an outcome of a male's arousal. I had always assumed the DA's just steered clear of anyone partnered with John to be on the safe side, and that was why Olivia and Elliot were always the ones on the witness list. Ah, the perks of spending 23 and a half hours a day with Mr. Conspiracy himself. But it was obvious Munch could never achieve the calm façade Olivia portrayed before twelve civilians, a judge, two attorneys, and a scumbag. I could, but John had ruined any chance I ever had of getting on the stand.

"Nothing further," Kim said, leaving Olivia to face Bushido's court-appointed defender, who looked just a little too young and just a little too eager. I wondered if this was his first case.

The lawyer smiled. "What are you thinking right now?"

Objection!" Kim was on her feet. "Relevance?"

"My line of questioning will make itself clear, Your Honor."

Judge Donnelly eyed him with something alluding to distate. "It had better, Counsellor. Answer the question, detective."

Olivia, for her part, look slightly stunned. "I'm not sure you want to know."

"I do. Tell me the thoughts running through your brain right now."

I watched Kim practically vibrating on the edge of her seat. Donnelly appeared to be doing her best to keep from raising her eyebrows too high. Olivia pursed her lips. "What are you, twelve?" she asked.

"Excuse me?"

"That was the thought running through my brain. Next question," she said, barely controlling a smirk. I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from laughing, and I saw John do the same beside me.

To his credit, Mr. Inexperienced recovered well. "You weren't thinking about that stunt you pulled with your partner?"

There was no reply from Olivia. Brow furrowed in confusion, she tried her best to regain her composure after being totally blindsided. I watched her mask come back up, but it was translucent this time. She still didn't know what the hell this idiot was talking about.

"Detective?"

She opened her mouth and said hesitantly, "I don't quite know what you mean."

"You don't?" he scoffed. I resisted the sudden desire to yell at him. "You're telling me playing hooker in his apartment was absolutely unavoidable?" That urge to yell got a hell of a lot stronger, especially as I watched Olivia steadily flush deeper until she stopped somewhere around scarlet.

"Yes, that's what I'm saying."

"So there was absolutely no possible way this could not have occurred?"

"After I decided to give him a way to save his marriage, there was nothing I could have done to keep his cover secure besides coming up with a logical reason for why I was there."

"And you didn't think stripping in front of a married man would constitute a grievance from his wife?"

Olivia answered smoothly, "Not until you started making a big deal out of it. My only goal was saving the case."

"If the case was so important, why did you endanger his position in the first place by posing as a hooker?"

"I don't see how those two are mutually inclusive, and the case was more important than my…modesty."

"Why did you go there in the first place?"

"To save his marriage."

"So his marriage was more important than the case, but the case was more important than your modesty?"

Damn, I would need a whole lot of Ebola-infected knives to castrate all these bastards.

"Yes."

At this moment, Kim finally did what I'd been silently begging her to do since this had started. "Your Honor, I don't see what this line of questioning has to do with anything other than harassing Detective Benson about her choice of methods in saving her partner's cover."

Judge Donnelly nodded. "I agree, Ms. Greylek. Mr. Crowley, make a relevant point or end the questioning."

"Yes, Your Honor," he acquiesced with a sleazebag smile. "Detective Benson, are you blaming Detective Stabler's injuries on my client so you wouldn't have to account for your actions in his apartment that night?"

Various things happened in rapid succession.

Before anyone could say anything, I felt John and Cragen tugging on my arms, keeping me in my seat. Both of them were glaring blue murder at hated public defender Crowley.

"Your Honor—" Olivia protested.

"Objection!" Kim cried.

"It was sustained before you raised it, Counselor," Donnelly informed her. "Mr. Crowley, you will move on or be held in contempt."

The sleazy smile was still in place, and the thought of tearing it off his face was rather appealing. "Sorry, Your Honor. Just one more question. Detective Benson, did you see Andre Bushido shoot your partner?"

Olivia tensed. "He was the only one who could have—"

"Just answer the question, Detective."

After a long, drawn-out pause, Olivia finally answered, "No."

"Nothing further," Crowley ended as he returned to his seat.

Donnelly turned to Olivia. "You may step down, Detective," she said, and Olivia walked, as in control as she could be, to slide in beside Cragen. I noticed that her eyes never once looked toward Kathy and Elliot, sitting one row behind us. Cragen offered her the position on my other side, and she took it without hesitation. As soon as she sat, her face bypassed scarlet and went maroon.

"Fin?" she whispered, sounding uncharacteristically quiet. "Did he really accuse me of sleeping with my partner and then shooting him?"

It was obvious to me that any answer I gave her would not make her feel any better.

* * *

Olivia sat at her desk, studiously working on her paperwork while Elliot did some Google-ing for our latest case. Though countless attempts had been made by Elliot to draw Olivia into a conversation, saying he didn't think she was taking advantage of the situation and the defense attorney was just being a gargantuan ass, she did not listen.

I cursed Jacob Crowley to the deepest circle of hell for igniting Olivia's blasted guilty conscience, so easily aroused and nearly impossible to quell. Now she was blaming herself for Elliot getting shot, and she was second-guessing her decision to hooker-ize herself to keep from compromising the investigation. While Elliot getting shot was technically her fault, it was unintentional, and it wasn't like she could go up against two armed smugglers (well, one armed smuggler and one armed undercover police officer posing as a smuggler).

Sighing deeply, I pushed back my chair and got up, walking over to Olivia and touching her shoulder. I bent to her ear and whispered, "Come on."

She stood without a word and met my eyes. "Why?"

"I want to ask you something."

Hesitation lasted only for a moment before she followed me up to the crib. She sat beside me on one of the beds and watched me cautiously. "What's up?"

How should I approach this? I wondered. "Liv…when you were testifying—"

"I swear I didn't mean to get him shot, Fin! You have to believe me: I didn't know they'd be watching the house!" Her eyes were wild, begging me to understand.

"Hey, Liv, nobody blames you! You didn't know, okay? We get that! That lawyer's full of shit and you know it." I waited until she nodded in understanding and then continued, "Liv, did I do something while we were in the airport that made you…annoyed?"

A wry smile graced her lips. "You caught that, huh?" She thought for a second and then said, "I guess I was wondering…why you…stayed so close to me all the time?" Her eyes caught mine with a question that I pondered how to answer.

"Well," I finally said, hoping I didn't throw her over the edge, "I wasn't about to let you out of my sight again."

She opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, probably tell me I was an idiot for blaming myself for Sealview, but Cragen walked in at that moment and demanded we go home. So, Olivia leveled her gaze at me and said, "We will discuss this later."

I grinned. There was the Olivia Benson I knew and loved.

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**PTSD coming up next! It may take a while, though, because I have a 30 minute speech due in two weeks and I'm going to be practicing for that. Also, I have Regionals to look forward to, so an additional chapter will be coming but long in the coming.**

**Anyway, pretend I'm Olivia and you can give me a donut! Please review!**


	9. PTSD

**Another quick but fervent THANK YOU to everybody who has been reading this! I love you all! Okay, so here's PTSD. I've had it done for a while but I haven't remembered to post, so there's a lot of my stories going to be up in a few. Umm... so, brief overview. This is when Fin and Olivia go to pick up the soldier guy from the apartment and Olivia has her freakout moment. It's not long, but I think it conveys a lot aobut Fin's state of mind. Uh....**

**Disclaimer: All SVU material, brilliant and wonderful and undying and cool and awesome and totally rocking SVU material, is the property of Dick Wolf and co. No copyright infringement of the perfect and brilliant and sweet and wonderful and addicting SVU is intended.**

**__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

His arm came up and struck her in the face. Had I not been so tied up in pulling the two idiots off each other, maybe I could have caught her. As it was, I kept my gun in both hands, telling them to break it up. Liv reeled backwards and her head collided sickeningly with the picture on the wall. She stood there looking stunned as glass fell around her. It could be considered nothing but a miracle that no shards hit her. She refocused on the fight before her and raised her gun. I relaxed – she seemed to be okay – until she took that gun and placed it against the guy's head.

Everything stopped, including my heart.

She was shaking faintly. Her eyes were wide and uncontrolled, anger and something else swam in the brown.

Very slowly, I reached over and lowered her arm. She blinked and jumped, shaking more violently now. The guy turned around carefully to look at her, but her eyes met mine.

"Liv? You okay?" I used my victim voice. She blinked.

Something, reality probably, crashed into her eyes. "I'm sorry," she breathed, sending a knife through my fantasy that she was healed. PTSD. That was what she had. The jolt had brought about a flashback. Of what, only she could know, but my guess was that Harris had slammed her into the wall once or twice. Or, God forbid, she was remembering when I'd pulled her off Matthew Parker and thrown her to the ground. At least I knew how to handle PTSD.

"Calm down," I told her, ignoring the men on the floor. "Feel your feet on the ground. Breathe." I touched her wrist and gently lowered her gun. She dropped it and backed up, panting and trembling. She was scaring me.

Doing my job as best I could, I cuffed the suspect we came for and held the links between his wrists. Then, I grabbed Olivia's arm and lead her out, still being careful like she was a cornered animal.

In the squad car, the glass was up to keep the soldier out of our hair. I drove. Olivia sat shotgun, pressed against the door, hand on the handle, straight-backed, staring out the window. Every muscle in her body, at least the one I could see, were tense and practically making her entire frame vibrate.

My heart had restarted and was now pounding in my chest. I thought she was going to shoot him. I really thought she was going to end her career. It would all be my fault. She had PTSD, plain as day. She'd had flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares, sleepless night, the whole string of evidence. That stemmed from her sexual assault at Sealview, which stemmed from the bastard Lowell Harris managing to get her alone, which stemmed completely and utterly from my blatant inability to protect her. I yelled at myself for being the cause of this whole shitty ordeal.

And then, to my eternal disgust, I got mad at her. Why couldn't she protect herself? I wasn't Elliot; I couldn't always come to her rescue. I couldn't keep looking over my shoulder and making sure she was okay. If she had just been able to beat him off or stay in the mess hall, nothing would have happened. We would have gotten out of there unscathed, and she wouldn't be making me go along with her stupid post-traumatic stress crap. Everything would have been perfect. She would be healthy and safe, and I wouldn't be sitting here, having this argument with myself. Why couldn't she just keep it to herself?

"What happened?" I demanded, intentionally sharp.

She breathed in and out very slowly, turned her head to look at me, and whispered, "I'm sorry."

Everything I'd thought before, how this was all her fault, exploded in my face. Damn it, Fin, it wasn't her fault. No, she blamed herself well enough without my help. In my opinion, the one I kept safe from my volatile emotions, it was my fault. I didn't know what she was apologizing for. It could have been her loss of control earlier, it could have been for dropping my dice in the pot of sludge Munch called coffee, and it could have been for letting herself get that close to being raped in the first place. Damn it, she shouldn't be apologizing.

I had to tell her something. "I don't want you to apologize, Liv. I want you to get better."

"I'm trying."

"No, damn it, that's not what I meant!" How was I supposed to talk to her when I didn't even know what to say myself? "I want…I want you to talk to me, Elliot, Cragen, Huang, whoever, and let them know so they can help you." She was watching me carefully, her hand still on the door handle. "Bottling it up like you're doing is NOT how you're going to heal."

She glared halfheartedly at me. "You know I'm seeing a goddamn shrink. Is that not enough for you?"

"And I didn't believe it even when I saw it! It doesn't matter that you're in therapy. Is it _helping?"_

No, Fin, it's not helping because I know what the person's going to say before she says it. That was the answer I wanted.

What I got instead was, "What does it matter?"

Was she kidding me? "It matters, Liv, because this is affecting how you do your job. If it had been Elliot with you today, or Munch, what would have happened? Elliot's still blissfully unaware because he wants to trust you, but John's been dropping hints, trying to figure out why you spend more time in the crib than you do in your apartment and why the shoes you went in there with never came out!

"If one of them had been in my place, you would be having a very different conversation, and I'm sure you'd like it even less than you like this one! Do you actually think you can keep this from them forever?"

"I _can_ keep this from them forever," she retorted, "and I don't need you to tell me what to do. I can take care of myself. I've been doing it since I was born. So take your advice and goodwill offerings and shove them up your ass. I. Am. _Okay._"

I wasn't quite sure what I was expecting, but it sure as hell wasn't that. "That had to be the most untrue thing you've ever said, Olivia. Have it your way, but don't come crying to me when you need a secret-keeper." God, she was driving me mad. Maybe I shouldn't have said that, but still! Why was she so adamant on torturing herself? She didn't deserve that! She didn't deserve the pain she was causing herself! Didn't she know that?

"You promised you wouldn't tell," she snapped, turning back to the window.

"Haven't you ever heard, baby? Promises are made to be broken."

"Are you blackmailing me?"

Was I? "I don't know. Are you going to tell them?"

"No."

"Then yes."

Of course, I realized that I would never be able to actually make good on my threat. I valued my credibility too much, and I wanted to be there for her the next time she needed me. Alienating her with this act of blasphemy was not a good idea. Besides, in her volatile state, I wouldn't put it past her to shoot me in the head and frame some poor schmuck on the street.

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**Like it, love it, want some more of it? Leave me a donut-shaped review! Actually, someone try that! That'd be really awesome! So cool!**

**Hey, has anyone ever tryed making yellow cupcakes with chocolate chips in them? Mmm mmm, good! YUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMY!**

**~ally**


	10. PostSmut

**OH! How proud are you of me? Very very very is the correct answer, people! I actually met my deadline! A long-dead story has been revived, and you all are very happy, correct? Yay! Okay, so, quick recap: this is Fin's POV on Olivia post-Sealview. It's all in his POV, and it's mostly him and Liv. There's not enough Elliot for it to be EO, so sorry to some of you. In this chapter, Fin gets a chance to be brotherly and give his little sis a pep talk and therapy session all in one! Yay! So, with that out of the way, there's another thing that must be taken care of. Neal Baer has said many times that, by the time Smut showed, Elliot and Olivia had an off-camera conversation about Sealview. In my opinion, that's bull crap. So, in my world, Elliot's still in the dark, and Olivia's intent on keeping it that way. Get it? Got it? Good.**

**Thanks to Sara Hudson for being so...willing...to assist me. Willing here meaning, "Please can I read it???" Just kidding, Sara. Thank you!**

**Also, I feel this deserves mentioning. Arabesque01 has the privilege of being friends with some of the SVU writer/editor people, and she got a group of Twitterers together (myself included) and wrote a letter to Neal Baer about why Olivia's PTSD was handled ineffectively and sent the wrong message to viewers and survivors. I am very grateful to her, and if you guys could be nice and give her lots of reviews and thanks and whatnot, I would appreciate it. Thanks!**

**Disclaimer:**

**ME: Please?**

**DW: No.**

**ME: Please?**

**DW: No.**

**ME: Please?**

**DW: No.**

**_two hours later_**

**ME: Please?**

**DW: No.**

**ME: Please?**

**DW: No. Now get off my set or I'm calling the police.**

**ME: El and Liv? Okay!**

**DW: No, they're fictional.**

**ME: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!**

**DW: I know a few good therapists who can help you.**

**Basically, SVU is still Dick Wolf's while I try to escape the padded cell and plexiglass handcuffs.**

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When I asked her how she'd convinced all three women to show up in the squad room and talk to Eric, I'd expected a Benson answer. I'd expected her to say she'd used one of the age-old lines from the book. Something like: "Facing your rapist will help you get over it" or "Do you want to be responsible for him raping more women in the future?" Both might have been true, both might have been logical, but rarely did anyone on this team consider them anything more than words from the mouth designed to snag a testimony. Still, I'd expected something mundane and emotionless.

Instead, she looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, "I told them about Sealview."

Before I could snap out of my stunned state, frozen as a statue, she was escaping. I heard her footsteps pounding down the hall. She'd struck her blow and was retreating to the safety of her fortress, protecting her own back just like I'd taught her to do years ago, when she'd transferred to Computer Crimes. She'd shown up on my desk before our partners arrived and told me what she'd done. Then, she'd said something I would never forget. The conversation played in my mind as I listened to her getting away from me.

_He told me I couldn't defend myself, Fin. I want you to help me show him that I can._

_He knows you can kick his ass any day, baby girl. He was just frustrated._

_But he was right! Fin, I'm a woman. People look at me in this unit and laugh behind their hands. I have to prove myself every day. I have to show I'm tough enough, brave enough, strong enough to taunt rapists and murderers all day. If I can't keep myself safe, how can he trust me to watch his back every day?_

To that, I'd had no answer. It gave me many, though. That was why she wasn't telling Stabler about what had happened to her. Ever since she'd joined this unit, she had been dancing with death. With every rapist we saw, she was the most at risk. None of us, even Elliot, ever really paid much attention to this because it was easier to just pretend she was one of the boys than to bear in mind the fact that she was, in fact, a woman chasing rapists. I had absolutely no idea what she went through every day, trying to prove to the cops in the locker room, her captain, hell, even her partner that she could do her job just as well as the rest of the team could.

She would never tell Elliot. If she had her way, he would stay in the dark forever because she believed him. She took every word from his mouth as gospel truth. If he told her she was pathetic, she'd believe it. If he told her she was useless, she'd believe it. When he told her she couldn't do her job without him looking over his shoulder to make sure she was okay, she'd believed it.

"Liv!" I shouted, running after her. The elevator was too slow to be much use, so I practically jumped the banisters of the staircase to catch up to her in the parking lot. "Liv!" She turned slowly, and for the third time in my life I saw tears running down her cheeks. The first time had been when that little girl had called 911 and talked to Liv for hours. The second time had been when I'd unlocked the handcuffs on her wrists and practically carried her out of the basement. The third time was now, and it never got easier to see her cry.

Her hands were trembling, her eyes were shining with tears still unshed, and I could see clearly the tear tracks down her cheeks. Her tears looked like diamonds, sparkling on her skin. They rolled down to her chin and dripped off, splashing to the ground. I had absolutely no idea how to deal with a crying Olivia Benson, but I did the only thing that felt right: I pulled her into a hug and let her cry. Cry she did. Maybe she wanted me to be Elliot, because her sobs increased. Part of me was scared. Olivia Benson did not cry. She did not show weakness. And yet here she was, my little sister who ran with the boys, sobbing uncontrollably into my shoulder. Whether she knew it or not, she was the rock that held the squad together. Without her, the boys weren't strong. They retreated into themselves. Nobody but Olivia could hold them up. Seeing her now, absolutely and undeniably broken, was terrifying.

The other part of me, the dominant part, decided to just let her cry. It was obvious she needed this, and something told me she'd never actually gotten out her tears for what had happened. If it was going to happen now, it had damn well better be where someone who knew could help her. So I held her in my arms and let her cry. Her keys were digging into my back, and my shoulder was soaked through.

"Shh, Liv," I whispered. "It's okay. Let it out, baby. It's okay."

Struggling for control of herself, she coughed and gasped in roundabout way of calming herself. "Fin?" she said, a hint of steel creeping into her voice.

"Yeah, baby girl?"

"I'm not that fragile," she said. "I'm strong enough, and I'm not going to break."

That she had to tell me that, reassure me, told me that she was trying to make herself believe it. She wasn't sure she was going to survive this, and that cut me deep. Olivia always survived. She was a survivor. She'd survived Sealview, and she had to survive the repercussions of that because, if she didn't , I wasn't sure what would happen to the rest of us.

Maybe the best thing to do was to get her talking, let her get it all out. "Liv?" If this was the wrong thing to do, I'd probably be singing soprano for weeks and Cragen would have my ass. Still, she needed someone to care enough to try. "Do you…" How to put this, how to put this? "Liv, do you want to talk to me?"

She stared at me for a whole five minutes, tears still rolling down her cheeks, as the world moved around us, until she finally said, "Do you want to listen?"

At first, I wasn't sure what she meant. Would I have asked her to talk if I wasn't going to listen? But then I got it. Would I be scared away by what she wanted to talk about? Would I judge her or condemn her for what she wanted to tell me? Would I abandon her after she'd bared her soul to me, like she was afraid Elliot would do? If I knew anything about Olivia Benson, it was that the men in her life were assholes. I knew everyone in the squad, Stabler included, were not assholes. I wanted to show her that. I wanted her to know that she could trust us, that we were going to stick with her, that we weren't going to leave her.

So I sucked up my thoughts about keeping personal shit to myself and said, "I'll listen to whatever you want to tell me."

The smile she bestowed upon me then made me want to kill everyone who'd ever hurt her, starting with Harris. How could anyone live with themselves hurting such a sweet, innocent creature?

* * *

We were sitting in one of those broken down diners that you hated to love because, despite the food that wasn't worth shit, it was cheap and good for talking. It was someplace called, stereotypically enough, Mom and Pop's, and their coffee was better than most, making up for their undercooked, over-salted food.

Liv ordered a bowl of fruit, playing it safe, and I wanted ice cream like the unhealthy pig she told me I was. Surely they couldn't do anything to ice cream to make it unappetizing.

"So?" I prompted, watching her closely as she fiddled her cheap paper napkin into shreds. At her glare, I remembered who I was talking to. Liv spoke when she wanted to.

Finally, when I began wondering if they were milking the cows back there to get the milk for the ice cream, she sighed. "I don't know how to tell him," she said.

That wasn't what I was expecting. Once again, I had made the mistake of expecting a Benson answer instead of one from Liv, the friend, the woman, the sexual assault victim. I wanted to say something sarcastic and make light of the situation, like I normally did, but I had advanced slightly in the way of her trust, and something humorous would definitely break that. So I stayed quiet and let her go at her own pace for once, instead of the pace the world was making her travel.

"I mean," she continued, "what am I supposed to say? 'Hey, El, I was almost raped in Sealview. Just thought I'd let you know!' Sure, that'll go over well." Her sarcasm was borderline hysterics, and I wanted to step in and tell her to calm down, but I'd already decided to do this on her terms, and she obviously needed a bit of venting time.

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" I suggested carefully. "Sometimes, there's no right way to say something. Especially something like this." I prayed to God that this didn't blow everything.

She threw up her hands in frustration. "I don't know where the beginning is, Fin!" She was perilously close to yelling, but she either didn't notice or didn't care. "What's relevant and what's not? Should I tell him why I went? Should I tell him what happened in the ambulance with Ashley? Should I tell him everything that happened when I got there? God, Fin, I don't know what to do!" She slammed her fists down on the table and groaned in pent-up anger and frustration. I thought I heard tears hitting the ugly metal table before. It reminded me irresistibly of the tables in the mess hall of Sealview, and I wasn't surprised when Liv recoiled as though she'd been burned, huddling against the back of the bench, shaking and whimpering. I slid in next to her and, not knowing what else to do, put a hand on her shoulder. Hugging her was something Elliot would do, but I wasn't Elliot.

And because I wasn't Elliot, I could think without anger making my eyes red. My eyes only turned pink. "Liv," I hesitated again, wondering if I was going too far, "there's something else going on here. You're scared of something besides telling Elliot what happened at Sealview. What is it?"

"He can't know I'm still scared."

The words were spoken so softly that, at first, I wasn't sure I heard them correctly. And of course, Mom and Pop chose this exact time to produce my freshly churned ice cream and Olivia's just-off-the-tree pathetic assortment of apples, bananas, and grapes. Hoping to wash down her confession with something easier to swallow, I took a gigantic spoonful of ice cream and shoved it down my throat. I nearly spit it back up. Was that _salt_ I tasted? How the hell had they managed to ruin _ice cream?_ I choked it down with a big gulp of coffee and glanced over at Liv, who was eyeing a fuzzy grape with distaste.

"Something tells me apples aren't that brown," I couldn't resist saying as she picked through her fruit in an attempt to find something that couldn't be classified as toxic waste. She rewarded me with a genuine smile and a grape in the eye. "Ow!" I crushed the offending object between my fingers and groaned when it squirted up my nose. "Damn it, Olivia!"

She chuckled and dipped her spoon into my ice cream. I watched with a sense of vindication as she clutched her throat and mimed falling over onto the table, stone cold. Of course, she jerked back up immediately, scooting as far back from the metal slab as possible.

With that, our moment of humor was gone.

"Liv, it's normal to be scared," I offered.

"But I'm not normal!" she cried, throwing another fluffy grape at me. "I'm the product of a rape, chasing down rapists every day. My longest relationship has been with my partner, my sense of self-preservation is so far gone I'm almost masochistic, and yet I can't help but be the same as everybody else who has ever been in my position!"

Calmly, I squashed the year-old grape beneath my foot, feeling the juicy innards spread over the diner floor. She was right, though. She wasn't a normal victim. She was Olivia. She was my sister. She was family, and God help anyone who screwed with my baby sister.

"Will you listen to me for a second?" I asked, moving back to my seat so I could look her comfortably in the eye. When she nodded, I continued. "You're right," I began, "you're not normal. You're our family. You're my little sister, you're Cragen's daughter, and you're Elliot's fucking long lost twin. It's going to be hard for them to accept what happened to you, but you're thinking of this like you're trying to tell your coworkers. You're not telling your coworkers, you're telling your family, just like any other…" I skirted around the word 'victim' "…woman who has been through what you have. No, you're not in a normal situation, but you're still a normal human being, no matter what happened to you in life, and nothing that's happened is ever gonna change that."

She was hooked on my words. I was actually getting through to her. Good. She needed this. "Baby girl, you're going to be scared for a long time," I said, watching tears form in her eyes and flow down her cheeks. "But that doesn't mean you have to be scared alone. We love you, Liv, and we want to help you. You just have to let us."

She smiled at me again, reached into her bowl, and threw a soggy brown apple at me this time. It landed on my cheek and slid down. "Don't go getting all sentimental on me," she teased. Then she sobered. "Thank you, Fin," she said seriously. "I…" she paused. "It's not that I don't know you want to help, it's just…well…I've scared away so many people. What if…" she struggled for words until I took pity on her.

"I hate to break it to you, sis," I grinned, throwing the apple back, "but we're not going anywhere. I swear to you. We're here for you." God, I _was_ getting sentimental. No way would I live it down in Munch found out I was turning into Mr. Softy.

Apparently Liv could read my mind, because she said with a laugh, "Don't worry, Mr. Softy, your secret is safe with me."

I resisted the urge to peel the grape remnants from the tiled floor and catapult them at her. "Are you going to tell him?"

"I don't know," she sighed. "But it's good to know I have a fraternal twin somewhere."

Half of my mission had been accomplished, then. I hadn't convinced her to tell her partner what had happened to her, but I'd gotten her smiling again. All with the help of words, ice cream, and year-old fruit.

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**Wow. 2,657 words later...**

**Sorry if Fin was a little OOC, but I did my best. He was being all mushy there for Liv. Sorry if it was too softy for you.**

**Like it? Love it? Even if you hated it, leave a review!!!**


	11. PostStranger

**I apologize every single chapter for the time it took to update, so I'm just going to assume you already know my reasons. Anyway, last chapter! Finally! I mean, I did start about midway through season ten, and look at that! It's season eleven already! Where has the time gone?**

**Okay, who thinks Chris should get an Emmy for Solitary? WOW!!! Intense! If he doesn't win SOMETHING for that performance, there is no justice in the world.**

**Anyway, back on topic, this chapter is where things get a little AU towards the end. It's not OOC, but, as far as I'm concerned, Elliot still doesn't know about Sealview, even in this season, and that will be my mindset until I am proven wrong. So, please enjoy the FINALLY final chapter of Watching Her.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but the words on the computer screen. Even then, technically, those words belong to the person who is credited with the invention of them. So, technically, I still own nothing. But anyway...**

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"Detective Tutuola, my office."

I looked up. Captain Cragen was leaning out of his office, staring at me with an unfathomable expression on his face. If I had to guess, I'd call it troubled.

"What'd you do?" Munch asked, eyes flickering from me to the captain.

I shrugged, but the look on my captain's face said, _don't you even think of arguing._ That was when I knew it was important. So, I followed him into his office.

Everything that ever could have happened to make Cragen want to talk to me privately raced through my head. Could a threat have been made? Had Ken died? Did the brass want my ass for breakfast because they couldn't seem to clamp their overlarge jaws around Stabler or Benson? Could he, for some reason, want me on some sort of undercover mission? Was it possible, had he somehow figured out what happened in the basement?

Cragen shut the door and, with the loss of normalcy in the squad room, the temperature seemed to drop at least ten degrees. For what felt like a very long time, he did not say anything, deciding apparently to just stare at me with some mixture of anger and disbelief. Somehow, I guessed he wasn't here to talk about me, and that left only a few options, one of which was Olivia. At least, though, I wasn't on the brass's breakfast platter. That was something to be grateful for.

"Detective Tutuola," he finally said, "would you like to tell me why I have such a bad feeling about what one of my detectives just said?"

That was not the question I was expecting. Something along the lines of, "_What happened in the basement?"_ or _"Do you have anything to say for your pathetic failure to protect your little sister?"_ would have been more accurate. I at least had answers to those questions. This one…I didn't even know what had happened.

I decided to go with the safe answer. "What happened, sir?" I asked.

His eyes narrowed and glared at me, and I felt that stupid chill run down my back again. "Please explain to me, detective," he began, "why Detective Benson's very recent comment made me question the accuracy of some of your DD5s."

What had she said? I tried to hide my nerves as I replied carefully, "What did she say?"

"'You didn't see that basement, captain,' she told me. 'I can't let her stay in the tombs all night.'"

I didn't quite know what to say. It didn't sound too implicating, so I wasn't sure what he expected me to say. But if he was waiting for me to break down and tell him everything about Sealview that I had left out of my DD5, he would be waiting for a very long time. There was no chance of me breaking Olivia's trust, especially about something that was completely hers to reveal or hide from anyone she chose.

My guess was that, if it was possible, she would have erased the memory from _my_ head too, just to secure her safety in the matter. Deep down, though, I was glad she didn't try to make me forget it. Maybe it had been her defense mechanisms kicking in, telling her she would need someone on the inside later, when she started falling apart. She hadn't known she would be breaking, but maybe something in her suspected it, even if it didn't alert her to the fact.

Once again, the safe answer seemed like the best answer, so I said, "How's that…"

But he interrupted me. "How does that make your DD5 seem inaccurate?" He stared at me, fuming, for several minutes before finally sighing. The smoke curling out of his ears floated up into the ceiling and disappeared.

"I don't know, detective," he said, "maybe it is an instinct. Remember, I've worked with you all for ten years. I know her, too."

That almost made me want to tell him. He was like a father to her, to all of us, and I thought he should know what happened to his daughter. What held me back was Olivia's face, swimming in my eyes, tearstained and red-eyed, hair messed up and sweaty, trembling with fear, staring at me with a mixture of gratitude and shock, as I uncuffed her hand from the doorknob and pulled her to her feet.

So, I didn't tell him. Both Kat and Liv were screaming at me not to, and I listened to them. "Cap'n," I told him, "whatever did or did not happen in Sealview… That's her secret. I ain't gonna tell you nothing she don't want me to. I'm sorry."

Angry brown eyes met mine. "What makes you so sure I was talking about Sealview?"

I knew what he was trying to do. I knew it. He had been talking about our Sealview DD5s, and he was as aware of that as I was. This bothered me. He was so focused on finding out what was wrong with Olivia, so fixed on knowing what had broken his daughter, that he was forgetting that she was a grown woman with feelings and memories and secrets that she had the right to share or keep inside.

"Because that's what we been talking about all along," I told him, doing my best to keep my voice civil, hiding the indignation in my heart. "You want to know what happened at Sealview. You want to know what happened to your daughter. And you forgettin' about her! I ain't gonna tell you what happened at Sealview because it's Liv's secret. Until she wants you to know, believe you ain't gonna find out!" I watched him glare at me, but I knew I was right, and I let him realize it.

When he did, I was almost scared of the shame I saw.

*** * ***

**Mindy's Coffee Shop – Outside Manhattan – 12:04 a.m.**

When she'd asked me to meet her, I hadn't known exactly what to expect. One week ago, we were talking in another café, and that had begun with her crying on my shoulder. This time, there had been no incentive for her to call me, and yet she still had. I was curious. What was she doing?

She was bent over her mug of tea because she didn't drink coffee anymore. I just could not understand that. How could a person, especially this person, manage to tolerate the day – and generally night as well – without coffee? Apparently she managed, and I stood in awe of her accomplishment. She sat before me now, sipping her drink as though it were incredibly strong alcohol, and I wondered again what she wanted from me.

My cherry cobbler arrived, presented to me by a peppy woman in her mid-sixties who was most likely a high-school cheerleader back in her day. I picked up the fork lying beside my plate and speared a piece of fruit, holding it up to my eyes to inspect it.

Smothered in artificially flavored jelly I could see and preservatives I couldn't, nausea curled through my lower stomach, and I wondered how I had considered eating this. Upon further scrutiny, I discovered a slit in the cherry, right down the middle, revealing cherry innards the color of blood. This only served to make me feel even more ill, and I gingerly returned the maimed fruit to its friends in the cobbler.

Olivia looked up at me, the soft clatter of the fork against the plate drawing her attention. "Aren't you going to eat that?" she asked quietly, eyeing the dessert.

"Be my guest," I told her, shoving the plate in her direction.

Hunger swam in her eyes, and I wondered how long it had been since she'd last eaten. Just when I was about it force-feed it to her, she shook her head. "No, thanks," she told me. "I'm not hungry."

My eyebrows rose. "Really."

"Mmm hmm." She returned her gaze to her tea. Her fingers flicked against the ceramic side, and I watched her eyes follow what I imagined to be ripples in the hot liquid.

"So," I said, deciding to take the initiative, seeing as she was finally speaking to me, "what's going on?"

She sighed. "I…" I waited patiently while she gathered her thoughts and finished, "I don't know what's happening to me."

That wasn't exactly what I was expecting. She was a sex crimes detective. She knew intimate details about what was happening to her, and yet she still sat there and told me, in effect, that she was clueless.

"Really, Liv?" I asked.

"No…"

Another sigh swept through her body. "I…I understand what's happening to me…" she told me, eyed fixed on the ripples her breath made in her tea. "I know that part, I just…don't…_know_ what's happening to me." She looked at somewhere around my shoulder blade and asked me if that made sense.

I had to be honest. "Not really."

"I know I have post-traumatic stress disorder," she said, attempting in her own confusion to get rid of mine. "I know I have flashbacks and insomnia and nightmares and all that. I know that. I just don't know…"

"Why?" I suggested.

She bit her lip. "I guess," she told me. "I mean, I know why. It's Matthew Parker's fault. It's Amber's fault. It's Harris's fault. It's Sealview's fault. It's…it's Kat's fault. But I still don't know why…"

"Do you know what's coming next?"

"Yes."

"Do you know why it's not your fault?"

"I…yes."

I wasn't pleased with that answer, but I let it slide. I thought I was getting somewhere, and I wasn't about to stop. If I did this right, maybe I could satisfy everybody. "Do you know why it's happening to you?"

"Because…I was…sexually assaulted," she whispered.

"Okay." This was the question I had been leading up to. As the interrogation was going so far, I thought it might work. She just had to be willing to try what I had in mind.

"Liv," I said, "are you wondering why it hasn't gone away yet?"

This was the question she didn't speak an answer to. Instead, she nodded once and, finally, her brown eyes met mine. I saw confusion and pain and a deep, deep sorrow that I knew had always been there and was now just stronger than before.

"It hasn't gotten better yet," she said softly. I hung on to her every word. "I'm not better yet. I'm not healed. I guess…I don't know…_why_."

I nodded, and the answer to her question popped into my head, sounding so perfect I had to congratulate myself.

"Liv, maybe…maybe it's because you're not treating the whole problem."

Now she was the one listening to my every breath, waiting for what I said next. If I could keep that attention, that desire for an answer, that belief that maybe I would have something helpful to say, I might actually manage what I wanted to.

"You're a Special Victims Unit detective, Liv," I said. "You see what happened to you in every victim you help. Most women don't relive their assault just by going into work every day. Most women don't spend the better part of their day interviewing victims, interrogating rapists, and digging into the nastiest parts of the scum of the earth. You're…you're not giving yourself a chance to heal."

She was still listening, so I pressed on. "The guys, they don't know. They treat you like nothing happened, and you put up with it, but you shouldn't have to. If they…" I saw distrust suddenly appear in her eyes, so I grabbed hold of her wrist to keep her in place. She flinched at the physical contact, and I wasn't one for touching people either, but it seemed to be the only way to make her listen.

"If they knew, Liv, they wouldn't treat you like a victim," I promised, "but they wouldn't treat you like nothing ever happened. There _is _a difference."

She frowned, staring at my hand clamped around her wrist. "I'm…I'm not…" but she couldn't finish a statement she knew was not true. So she tried again. "I don't…I don't want to be treated like I'm fragile."

"You wouldn't be!" How was I supposed to make her understand this? "You're the strongest person I know, with or without the assault. They're not gonna think any different."

"Fin…"

"Liv, listen. They wouldn't think you're fragile, they'd support you…help you through it…help you heal. Get it?"

Olivia nodded slowly, still looking slightly unconvinced, so I continued.

"They love you, Olivia," I told her. "We all love you, and nothing could happen to change that."

Again, she nodded, and I figured I'd done all I could do. It was up to her now.

"I think…" she began carefully, "I think I'd like to be alone…if that's okay?"

"Sure," I consented, standing up. My untouched cherry cobbler was still on the plate in front of her. "Are you going to eat that?"

"Actually…I think I'll call Elliot. He'll eat it."

I was surprised, pleasantly so. "It'll be cold by then," I told her.

She laughed, her first real laugh in way too long. "He'll eat it anyway," she promised. "Trust me."

I did.

* * *

**Mindy's Coffee Shop – Outside Manhattan – 2:30 a.m.**

I know she told me she wanted to be alone, but something in me just didn't want to leave her alone in a coffee shop at two in the morning, so I left her at the table and waited outside for her partner to arrive.

He was in there now, I knew. I could see them from where I was sitting. They were squashed into the same side of the booth. Her eyes were on his, and they seemed to be having one of their silent conversations. All of a sudden, I watched her lips move. And then they didn't stop. She was crying, and he was crying, and he put his arms around her, pulling her into a hug. I watched her bury her face in his shoulder, and I watched him hold her head still, his tears falling into her hair as her body shook with sobs.

I watched him kiss the top of her head, gentle and caring.

I watched her pull back just a bit and meet his eyes, and I watched understanding flowed between them.

And, before my very eyes, I watched her begin to heal.

**_______________________________________________________________________________________________________**

**FINIS!!! Thanks to everyone who has stuck with me through this, especially because of my messed up, nonexistent updating schedule! I love you all! You are wonderful and a blessing to me!**

**Please, this one last time, I'm asking you to review this story. Please?**

**3 Always,**


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